Duncan Harley

A special train left the Joint Station at Aberdeen on Friday 24 July 1914 and headed north to the old railway station at Inverurie where it stopped to pick up a number of very important passengers before proceeding to a point midway between Inverurie and Inveramsay. Wooden ladders were lowered onto the track and, on that damp and blustery pre-first-war summer’s day, some 300 passengers disembarked then trudged up through the muddy fields to join crowds of locals who had gathered to witness the inaugural ceremony of the monument to the July 1411 Battle of Harlaw. The battle is of course often portrayed as a simple bloodthirsty clash between Highland and Lowland cultures and popular belief holds that the outcome saved the city of Aberdeen from rape and pillage at the hands of the highland hordes. The Lord of the Isles was indeed a troublesome noble. He looked upon himself as legitimate heir to the Earldom of Ross and when the Duke of Albany, who had become Regent following t...

Bit of a departure tonight. Instead of self-aggrandising my own writing, I thought it might be nice to publicise a fellow author’s work. Famedram's popular tourist titles usually cover the likes of whisky and haggis, the Vital Spark and great Scottish inventions plus of course the lighter side of Highland life. A Scottish through and through publishing house - god knows we need them now more than ever – the Famedram brand has now ventured bravely into the realm of the railway buff in the form of Scotland’s Stations – A Traveller’s Guide. And a good thing too! This splendid publication reveals the largely unknown history of the stations which serve our Scottish national rail network. Superbly illustrated throughout, the book sets out on a modern-day Bradshaw style journey around these, largely Victorian, historical sites. Around 150 of Scotland’s platforms are featured and alongside an image or two, each entry records the unique history of the station plus a general desc...