2025 sees both the 135th anniversary of the building of the Forth (railway) Bridge and the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. There is a small exhibition of material on show in the Upper West Library of the Signet Library to commemorate both events.
These include two early albums of images of the Forth Bridge under construction, Grant and Son’s vast and luxurious commemorative publication and engineer William Westhoven’s more cerebral and detailed account for The Engineer.
Also on show are David Octavius Hill’s 1832 lithographs of the opening of the Glasgow and Garnkirk Railway – down which the Garnkirk vase would travel on its way to the Upper Library in 1841 (the gift of Thomas Sprot, whose family were involved in the financing of the line).
This is accompanied by a copy of one of the very earliest of Bradshaw’s Railway Guides, published in 1842 and showing the first years of operation of the Garnkirk line, the Edinburgh to Glasgow Railway and the first Dundee and Fife railways. The pocket diary of the Lord Advocate John Murray (d.1859) from 1841 shows his handwritten notes on the timetable of the Glasgow and Greenock Railway, on which he would have been one of the very earliest passengers.