Frequently asked questions

news updated: 24 Aug 2009

What was the Lochmaben Camping Coach?

An enquiry from a gentleman in Australia prompted research into this topic. He had spent happy holidays in the coach as a youth from Dundee.

The website is indebted to Davie Wilson, Lockerbie for the following information.

The coach itself was an ex-Caledonian coach built at St.Rollox in the early 1900s. It was withdrawn from service in 1955 and converted for camping coach use in 1956. It appears to have been in use from 1957 until 1961 – it doesn’t appear in the B.R. ‘Holiday Haunts’ brochure for 1962. It was sited in the goods yard, behind the station fence. This is an unusual choice of site, because one of the conditions attached to the booking of camping coaches was that you had to buy four adult train tickets (two children equalled one adult) to the station the coach was at. There were, by 1957, no passenger services to Lochmaben – presumably you were allowed to book to Lockerbie or Dumfries.
Original Caley number was 435, becoming LMS 16021 and later 25983 in 1933.

The photos show the coach in the goods yard with the road bridge in the background, a map of Lochmaben station before the road bridge was built and a map showing the station and bridge. The black and white photos give an idea of what the interior of the coach might have looked like.