Service to Industry

British Railways (Scottish Region) poster, Service to Industry, The New Ore Discharging Plant at General Terminus Quay, Glasgow, by Alasdair Macfarlane, about 1957. Coloured lithograph depicting the iron ore discharging facility and two shunting locomotives with trains of hopper wagons. In the background are bulk carrier ships on the River Clyde, with cranes along the banks. Text below reads "Planned to provide a speedy handling, the ore is conveyed by rail from the plant to the ironworks and steel works in Lanarkshire in specially constructed 33-ton hooper wagons." At left is the British Railways totem logo. Printed by McCorquodale, Glasgow. Format: quad royal. Dimensions: 40 x 50 inches, 1016 x 1270mm.

Service to Industry, a British Railways (Scottish Region) poster by Alasdair Macfarlane, published in about 1950.

The poster depicts the new iron ore discharging plant at General Terminus Quay at Pollockshields in Glasgow. The facility, which was financed by British Railways and the steel firm, Colvilles Ltd, opened in 1957. It was built to handle the unloading of iron ore from ships River Clyde for the new steelworks at Ravenscraig in Motherwell. The poster shows 0-6-0 diesel shunter locomotives - later known as the Class 08 - with trains of hopper wagons designed to transport minerals. The 08 shunters were introduced in 1952 and over 1,000 were built in the following ten years.

In the early 1970s a new deep water facility for unloading iron ore was built at Hunterston in Ayrshire, so the plant in Glasgow was closed. The facilities at General Terminus Quay were demolished in the 1980s and the site is now a residential area.

The artist, Alasdair Macfarlane, was born on the island of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides in 1902. After serving at sea he settled in Glasgow in 1929. He combined work for the Clyde Navigation Trust with a career as an artist, specialising in maritime subjects. Macfarlane died in 1960.

The poster was published for British Railways by McCorquodale & Co, which had been founded in 1846 in Liverpool as a printer specialising in work for the railways. In the 1870s the company opened a works in Glasgow and in the twentieth century continued to work for the railways, printing many poster designs.