In the mid-1960s, I took a series of photos of the remains of the railway that ran from Dundee to Newtyle. Now, 40 years on, I have trawled the internet and compiled an account into which I've inserted my photos, etc. Where possible I have included links to the internet sources, but I have also copied the material into this site in case the links ceased to connect after a while.
One of my early childhood memories was of my dad lifting me up to look over a wall to see the entrance to the tunnel "under" the Law - in fact it started just below the crest of a shoulder of the hill. That night, in my dreams, we found another entrance behind the High Kirk (which stands more or less directly above the tunnel) and we found an ancient steam engine in the middle of the tunnel. Maybe, subconsciously, I've been searching for this engine ever since!
The stimulus to start looking for the railway, and particularly for the north end of the tunnel, was probably a conversation with the mother of a former school friend who said that, in her youth, it had been possible to walk through the tunnel - although she had never done so.
I had heard that there were traces of the track bed out in the countryside and, within the town, there were several buildings which sat at odd angles to the adjacent roads because they had been built to align with the railway track. I was surprised to find that one of these buildings was my father's own printing works where I used to watch the steam trains shunting the trucks on the Fairmuir marshalling yard and another was the laboratory block at the Royal Infirmary where I started my career as a biochemist.
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Elliott Simpson, Biochemistry Dept., Monklands Hospital, Airdrie, ML6 0JS
July 2006