In the 1950s there were still train services to most parts of the country, and steam was everywhere. Many of the locomotive types used in Scotland never ventured south of the border. So from 1952 Brian Morrison set out to record every locomotive class that existed there. This was eventually completed in 1958 when one of the post-Grouping developments of the Caledonian Railway's 439 class 0-4-4Ts was identified in Glasgow St Enoch station.

This highly illustrated album therefore includes at least one example of every type of steam locomotive to be seen in Scotland during the 1950s, except for a couple that were cut very early in the decade. The reader is taken from Edinburgh up the East Coast via Dunfermline and Thornton Junction, then across to Inverness and Kyle of Lochalsh and back through Aviemore, Perth, Stirling and Glasgow to Kilmarnock and Dumfies, with many stops in between.