The following contribution came from Jimmy Scobbie formerly of Dundas.
He was the eldest son of George Scobbie who was the Head Draughtsman at John G. Stein.
Jimmy has now retired from a career in the Merchant Navy where he was captain of various ships. He lives in Colchester and his brothers, John and Ronald, live near Vancouver, Canada) Wartime Castlecary Works Home Guard was a serious team of Stein employees dedicated to fulfil Churchill’s uplifting speech, “We shall fight them in the fields and ditches and we shall never surrender”.Initially the Home Guard had no weapons or uniforms but with the passage of time supplies permeated through. Excitement was generated with the provision of a .22 rifle and the construction of a proper firing range into the bing adjacent to the west end of the works.
Local children relished the treasures of collecting the spent cartridge cases which were to be found in the heather and extracting the lead bullets from the wooden railway sleepers in the target area. Their parents, however, were not enamoured at finding these with their bare feet in the carpet at dead of night. Ultimately, a Lee Enfield .303 was allocated to the platoon complete with assembly, dismantling and cleaning instructions and that rifle must have been the cleanest in the British Army because every member of the platoon had custody and responsibility for the weapon on a rota basis.In anticipation of invasion, various Home Guard exercises were held in the Big Wood to the south of the L.N.E.R. railway and these were monitored by enthusiastic children concealed in the heather, bracken and trees until detected and thereafter reprimanded by their parents. Serious defences were introduced at Dundas. At the west end banking a mortar trench was established to monitor any enemy approaching eastbound from Castlecary School and at the east end of Dundas an anti-tank trap was established for any enemy approaching Westbound from the bowling green….this in anticipation of the supply of a mortar, ammunition and anti-tank mines. (this gets more like Dad’s Army by the minute !)Sentry Duty protecting Steins was taken seriously. On one occasion a stranger in a car arrived at the west end of the works at dead of night and, since suspicions were aroused when no justifiable reason or authority was for thcoming, he was apprehended, searched and escorted to the home of the Works Manager, Charlie Taylor. Disturbing Charlie at dead of night required sound judgement.
It eventually transpired that the stranger was a Government Inspector with responsibility to monitor and inspect Stein’s black-out facilities devoid of appointment or invitation. He was eventually released from detention but not before the Home Guard, during the period of his interrogation, had deflated all four tyres in his car to prevent any attempt to escape. ( Definitely Dad’s Army !) Air Raid Shelter. With the imminent threat that Steins surface works, pithead and working employees could be bombed, a 30 degree downslope shaft was cut at the west end of the works to a junction with the main pit level several hundred feet below. Walking access to the pit level then served as an Air Raid Shelter for employees at work, for the residents of Dundas and as an escape route for trapped miners and was utilised in simulated exercises and in reality when Clydebank was blitzed. When the all clear was sounded after the blitz, from the high elevation atop the rifle range bing, one could witness to the west, the glow in the sky from the Clydebank fires.For whatever reason, an anti-aircraft shell exploded in the field between Dundas and the canal which caused great excitement for the local children who, after the authorities had departed, excavated the site to retrieve shrapnel. The children’s pleasure however was shortlived because Mr. Weir, the Dundas Air Raid Warden, requested through the parents the surrender of any shrapnel containing letters or numbers in order to establish the identity of the manufacturer. It was understood that an antiaircraft battery was sited at Castlecary, probably to protect the Viaduct or the oil pumping station, and defective shells fell in the vicinity of Dundas and Allandale. VE & VJ Bonfires The Dundas bonfires, small in comparison with Allandale, were apparently supplemented with fog detonators “donated” by the L.N.E.R. and when they exploded in the heart of the bonfire a spectacular display of sparks flew heavenwards. All round the valley, bonfires could be detected at Haggs, Longcroft and Dennyloanhead. The Brickworks Steins recognised that a plentiful supply of clean, fresh water would be essential for the operation of the boilers. Research would have shown that natural drainage from the Big Woods produced a burn which led to the Bonny Water and that in latter years culverts had been built to take this burn under the L.N.E.R. and L.M.S. railways and the B816 Allandale road.To harness this water a dam was built in a natural hollow between Allandale road and the L.M.S. railway and this pool was known locally as the Dundas Pond. Atop this dam, a pumping station was built to feed water into the brickworks.The pond provided seasonal pleasure for the local boys, swimming during the summer, boating with fence posts, tadpole hunting, rafting using an aircraft auxiliary fuel tank, the introduction of perch from the canal and winter sports when the pond froze over. No Health and Safety in those days. Whilst the brickwork provided an adventure playground for boys, there was no vandalism……….part of the fun was to avoid detection from employees, parents or the Night Watchman, Wullie Brown. Shunting of wagons. The shunting of wagons provided another mischievous adventure for Dundas boys by 60 A VIEW FROM DUNDAS laying copper coins on the track and to watch as the wagon’s wheels compressed the coins beyond recognition. ( Ed. note: the Allandale children were too poor to waste pennies ! ) Another ploy was to conceal oneself within a wagon and be shunted up and down the siding. Ham boxes: One popular childhood venue was to play amidst a huge pile of what was called wooden ham boxes, the name derived from their distinctive smell. They each measured about one cubic metre and were stored and repaired adjacent to Mr. Millar’s joiners shop. ( Steins sent a lot of bricks out packed in crates). To this day some 60 years later, I still cherish the memory of Mr. Millar reshaping a splintered plank of wood into a highly cherished wooden rifle. The Railways In midsummer evenings we could watch the many named locomotives thundering past on their way to London.Annually the south side of the L.M.S. embankment produced a delightful crop of raspberries which were made into jam. The manned signal box adjacent to Dundas was a prohibited building for us but on a few occasions entry was unofficially invited after running an errand for the signalman, the interior was a battery of manually operated levers and a display of gleaming polished brasswork complimented by a roasting open coal fire.In contrast to the L.M.S. in which the railtrack swept on a curve past Dundas. the L.N.E.R. track was dead straight and any approaching train could visually be detected at a considerable distance.The L.M.S and the L.N.E.R. crossed at the west end of Stein’s offices adjacent to the Dundas Pond, the L.M.S. going under the L.N.E.R. Both lines were used as a walking shortcut to Greenhill and Cumbernauld. The Allandale Pipe Band. Childhood memories of the pipe band were the skirl of the pipes as they marched past Dundas and on via Castlecary and Longcroft on a clockwise circuit of the valley which reverberated to their music. At the Allandale Gala Day the band would lead the procession from the village into the football field, there to assemble into a circle and continue to play oblivious to the distraction of all the excited children in their Sunday best clothes dancing round their feet. The Canal Between Locks 17 to 19, the canal is deepest on the north side and favoured by vessels in transit. The south side shoals into shallows. Craft approaching eastbound would sound their siren to alert the bridgemaster who would stop the road traffic on the main Glasgow to Stirling road then manually open the bridge to give priority to canal traffic. He was also responsible for opening lock 19. The sound of the siren would also alert the children that a boat was coming through and they would run down to see what craft it was.Further to the earlier story of Adam Baxter being drowned in the canal. That summer was exceptionally hot. His body was spotted by a truckload of Italian P.O.W.s on their way to the brickworks and one of them stripped and dived in to retrieve the body, a very gentlemanly act. On gala days prior to milk being bottled, the milk was delivered in milk churns and then transferred to huge kettles for distribution to the children’s mugs. The enthusiasm of the milk distributors kept the children’s mugs so full that they could barely compete in the races which followed. The patternshop provided a generous supply of sawdust for the line marking of Allandale Football Field on occasions when serious competitive games were scheduled. Bags of sawdust would be conveyed by wheelbarrow to the pitch and the backbreaking process of line marking would be done by hand. The west end of the pitch had a suggestion of grass but the east end was pretty bare due to the continuous wear and tear and any serious fall on the rough surface would generally produce blood.
