ELCRP had a recent enquiry regarding a missing poster at North Berwick station. The position is as follows.
The original historical poster was prepared many years ago by North Berwick in Bloom, with assistance from Stuart Auld, a local railway enthusiast, supplying the photographs. That poster, and indeed the adjacent one for The Community Rail Partnership itself, were removed, without warning by ScotRail. Harry Barker, chari of the ELCRP, spotted this immediately and raised the issue with ScotRail.
It transpires that ScotRail outsource the maintenance of all their stations to an independent firm who are fined if station appearance falls below a certain standard, there being regular inspections. Someone, somewhere, has raised the issue of non standard posters and recently a decision was taken that non standard posters should be placed in grips that are coloured white (and therefore not subject to the outsourcer’s unwanted attention), with official ScotRail posters being held in grips that are coloured silver. Unfortunately this, whilst communicated to the outsourcer, was not seemingly taken to the next step with a view to identifying non standard posters and making alternative arrangements, or for that matter intimating the decision to some other ScotRail areas, who seemed unaware of this until recently. The upshot was that both posters have been removed and presumably destroyed.
Following a meeting with ScotRail last week, ScotRail are to provide white poster grips – two for each station, but these are not yet available.
A copy of the poster that was removed from North Berwick is, I believe, held in North Berwick Museum. I also understand that another four or so may have been produced originally but their whereabouts are unknown. There is no record of any digital copies.
The CRP will meet the cost of producing a new poster. Other photographs are readily available on SCRAN.
It is also the case that we are looking at producing a historical poster for all stations on the route – the old Musselburgh station that was situated in The Mall where Tesco now is; Inveresk for Wallyford; and Prestonpans, Longniddry and Drem and of course Dunbar. This will take time and ScotRail will not put up any of the white grips until this has been done as they do not allow empty grips at their stations.
A copy of the old poster, suitably shrunk for web viewing is available here: North Berwick Railway Station Poster: A brief history
Photo Credit: Geof Sheppard – 380104 stands at North berwick station before returning to Edinburgh Waverley. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
