Train at Auchterhouse
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The track from Balbeuchly meets the deviation line at Auchterhouse station
The track bed is overgrown with trees - in the middle distance to left of signal box
Priestley's Navigable Rivers and Canals gives the length of the second level section as being four miles and a furlong, with a rise of only 3 feet 9 inches. The track bed from the top of the Balbeuchly incline can be seen as a wooded embankment crossing the fields and meeting the end of the second deviation just to the north of Auchterhouse station.
Train at Auchterhouse |
. The track from Balbeuchly meets the deviation line at Auchterhouse station The track bed is overgrown with trees - in the middle distance to left of signal box |
This 
steam excavator was possibly used to help built the Dundee-Newtyle rail line.
The line from Auchterhouse north runs across a former marshy area. In The Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, Vol.IV No XIX, 1833, it is said that "One difficulty was the passing over the bog of Auchterhouse, the moss in which has always been of so soft a consistency that no cattle could walk across it. The passage over it was accomplished by digging the moss to a considerable extent on each side of the railway, and throwing it up in the shape of an embankment, upon which the railway is placed above the ordinary level of the moss. The large ditch thus formed on each side of the railway not only dried the moss upon which the railway rests, but it has drained the bog for a considerable distance on each side; so that corn and grass may be seen growing where they never did before. The slopes of this mossy embankment are planted with trees appropriate to their situation, such as willows, poplars, spruces, and alders."
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June 2019