Cambusnethan Station circa 1900

This is a great photo of members of the Scottish Homing Union waiting for the train to arrive at the old Cambusnethan Station to take their pigeons to the race point. The photograph was kindly supplied to the SHU office by Willie Watson of Newmains FC, a local of the Newmains and Cambusnethan area in Lanarkshire. I have no idea who the fanciers are in the photograph so if anyone can enlighten me I would be delighted to update this caption. It’s obvious that many of the youngsters, though obviously smartly dressed for the photograph, are barefoot an if you look to the extreme left of the photograph you can just see some other local children that have clearly been told to stand back out of shot of the camera, no doubt they were quite in awe of the other boys in the photo who were part of the “elite” group of fanciers. Perhaps some of them were “loft boys” to the men on the platform or were there helping fathers or uncles to load the pigeons.