One of the authors of the new book, Iain MacIntosh, is also an accomplished artist and draughtsman.

He has recently completed this excellent and atmospheric pencil drawing of one of the ubiquitous V2-hauled freight services of the 1960s thundering north through Newcastleton.

These locomotives and the inter-regional transfer freights between Carlisle Canal and Edinburgh Niddrie (Kingmoor to Millerhill from 1963) are an utterly signature feature of the line’s last decade of steam traction and are something I shall certainly be creating in model form. I’ve made a start with the model shown below, based on a Bachmann V2 with some refinements added. I’m not entirely happy with this model yet and there’s still work to be done but in the absence of a state of the art V2,  this version will suffice for now.