Last lap. (Told you there were lots of photos.)
Weird landscape in the foreground, natural landscape behind. Binny Craig's over there somewhere, and the Bathgate Hills form the horizon:
The remains of the trackbed for the wee shale trucks? I'm guessing so, as it seems to be a solid wooden frame, but I wasn't about to try and excavate it. It would make sense though: I'd have thought the shale is too unstable for them to have plonked down conventional sleepers:
Just next to it, there's the remains of a, uh, something or other:
In case you don't know, the railway wagons with the spent shale were hauled up a ramp on the south side (sort of discernible on the photo from a distance I put up before this lot), then across the top of the bing to whichever part was currently being used, to be tipped over the side.
Getting lower down again:
I can't decide whether this is a piece of rail or a small girder:
Looking back up. It's steeper than it looks here:
So, on the off-chance that anybody's wanting to visit the thing, here's how to get there. Get thee to here by car (because public transport would be a horror story unless you're fairly local):
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&F ... &encType=1Option 1: park at the wee layby on the corner of the B8020 just to the west of where Faucheldean's marked (Faucheldean isn't there, that's just a wee engineering place.) Then wander east along the road and nip through the gap in the trees, which is where I went this time.
Option 2: I'd say this is the better of the two. Park yer wagon on Greendykes Road, which should be easy enough: that's the Union Canal snaking through the middle of the map, and there's a wee housing scheme along the road to the south of the canal. At the canal bridge, head east along the towpath for about half a mile till you reach this bridge, marked No. 29 on the keystone:
Clamber ye up the bank and head across, pausing to admire the industrial heritage and that:
They tried to block this entrance off:
But somebody had other ideas:
Nip through. Ignore the bing on your right; that's a smaller, separate one. Head up the wide track until you see a path heading north up into the scrubland by the side of the smaller bing. You'll know it when you see it, cos there's a bloody big shale bing rising behind it.
All the world seems in tune on a Spring afternoon, when we're poisoning pigeons in the park.