The notes below were compiled by Mark Rand for publication in the August 2020 edition of the FoSCL Journal. Mark has kindly given us permission to reproduce them here.
"Where did the Settle footbridge come from?"
I and many others have believed it to have come from Drem, Scotland. That information is repeated in numerous printed sources. Doubt was raised however by Scottish Railway Heritage committee member John Yellowlees who, when e-mailing me with kind comments about the Settle water tower's recent TV appearance said this:
A week ago I had a look round the open-air parts of the Prestongrange Museum, In the long grass I found the remains of a footbridge. I circulated these to fellow members of the Heritage Railway Association Scottish committee, and received this response from Jim Watson:
"The bridge at Prestongrange is 56b from Drem, it was taken there direct on the back of Alex Anderson's lorry on the installation weekend. While your photos do not show the bridge number they show two other "unique" facets of Drem; the white painted decorative column caps (Prestonpans were painted green) and the "danger electric cable" plate (not present at Prestonpans). The decorative "balls" on the half landing at Drem also differ in detail. Settle may well have either Prestonpans (FB36a) or Spittal (FB50?) which were recovered around the same time. The Spital bridge was reputed to have been previously located at Melrose and at the time there was talk of it going back there."It is always troubling when long held understandings are challenged so robustly so I asked Geoff Bounds, the BR man charged with getting the newly reprieved S&C properly back in business. Geoff was able to provide some corroboration in that they had a choice of two at the time, one less bad than the other lying alongside one another in a yard at Millerhill. One was from Drem, the other from Prestonpans, both removed for ECML electrification. Geoff explains:
"Having made the selection we then arranged for it to be transferred to the engineer's yard at Lancaster but, as the level of work required was beyond the capability of the team at Lancaster, it was moved to Newton Heath. Largely the refurbished bridge is unchanged in appearance from the condition it came down from Scotland save for the HMRI's insistence that it was fitted with polycarbonate inner panels behind the lattice parapets as the gap between the struts exceeded 100mm. Also we inserted a timber rail to make the parapet height compliant. HMRI accepted the use of a non standard footbridge on the basis that in overall we were increasing safety at Settle*. Lighting was added later.The bridge was installed in early 1993 in conjunction with platform raising works. Tony Freschini was instrumental in getting the DLO organisation at Manchester to do the works which was their last project before being disbanded. They did an excellent job. The bridge and platform raising works were commissioned towards the end of March 1993."
So there we have it. Prestonpans it seems to have been - not Drem.