The train from Edinburgh had been a couple of minutes late due to the high winds and had to delay even longer as one of the first class passengers had arranged for a coach to meet him at Leuchars to take him to St Andrews. On arrival at the station however, there was no sign of coach or coachman and so the gentleman climbed back into first class, having decided to continue on to Dundee instead. Above the noise of the ferocious storm, the passengers on board heard the knock-knocking of the stationmaster’s hammer as he went along the train, tapping the wheels in each of the five carriages. Once he was happy the train was sound, he pulled out his whistle and was about to blow it when he looked east to see the lights of an approaching vehicle, hurtling along the road at speed. It was the gentleman’s coach, so the stationmaster rushed to first class and helped him and his luggage off the train and onto the platform.

What a lucky escape, Fiona thought as she continued reading. The next stop on the track north – and the last one before the bridge – was St Fort. It was here that all tickets were collected and although these were later counted, there were some passengers without tickets: off-duty railway staff and children accompanying adults. This was why the final number of deaths was never known. There were fifty-nine names on the memorial but it was reckoned that many more had died. St Fort was only two miles from the bridge and as the train increased its speed to try to make up time that stormy evening, the catastrophe awaiting those poor passengers loomed.

Fiona shut the book and looked out at the rolling Fife landscape. She must bring Jamie on this train, he would love the journey. She pushed the book into her bag and pulled out her iPad to look up Edinburgh buses to Granton.

* * *

As the bus swept round the corner into Granton, she looked out over the Firth of Forth and recalled the passage in the book about the doomed train leaving from Granton pier. Having left Edinburgh Waverley at 4.15 p.m., the train had stopped at Abbeyhill, Leith Walk and Trinity, then at Granton at 4.35 p.m. Here the passengers boarded the paddleboat ferry, the William Muir, to Burntisland where they continued on the train through Fife and eventually to the River Tay and their fate. She gazed out over the river towards Fife, barely visible in the morning haar.