Original upload date: Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT
Archive date: Fri, 03 Dec 2021 20:35:17 GMT
It's 25 years since a straw locomotive hung from the Finnieston Crane. It was on the fourth of May, 1987 that it arrived there from Springburn and it hung over the empty Clyde, suspended for just a fe
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w weeks, waiting for a ship that never came, until it was taken back to Springburn on June twenty-second and burned there in a Viking ceremony, marking the loss of the locomotive industry which had once flourished there.
Locomotives suspended from the crane had once been an impressive and familiar sight. The Straw Locomotive hung there for seven short weeks but somehow suspended in time. Most people who saw George Wyllie's Straw Locomotive, still remember it.
"I am unable to explain the 'Straw Locomotive'.
I enjoy the saying of it, the writing of it, the very idea of it... the making of it...
Today, in Springburn, industry is at a low ebb... What has happened?
The 'Straw Locomotive' can ask questions but cannot give answers."
George Wyllie (1987)
On 22nd June 1987, the Straw Locomotive was taken down and taken back to Springburn where it was burned on waste ground, where the North British Locomotive Company had once stood, in a 'Viking-style' ceremony, lamenting the waste of the skills which had been lost.
As a piper played a lament, the burnt-out chasis revealed a steel question mark, raising the question: why was Springburn's industry, and eventually the district itself, destroyed?.
The event was witnessed by a crowd which included those who had worked in Springburn's locomotive industry.
