Colonel Kenneth Cantlie (1899-1986), mechanical engineer, was born in London in 1899 as the youngest son of Lady Mabel Cantlie (née Barclay Brown, 1860-1921) and Sir James Cantlie (1851-1926), a surgeon and specialist in tropical diseases. Kenneth Cantlie had a long international career as a designer of locomotives and coaches in Argentina, India and China and promoting the British locomotive industries after the Second World War. The Cantlie family had strong connections to China: Sir James trained Dr Sun Yat-Sen (1866-1925), who became the first president of China after revolution in 1911. Sir James and Lady Cantlie were instrumental in rescuing Sun Yat-Sen in 1896 when he was held captive at the London Chinese Legation by the Chinese Qing Dynasty. Sun Yat-Sen remained a close family friend and became the godfather of Kenneth Cantlie. Kenneth Cantlie was educated in Scotland at Junior School and Gordon’s College, Aberdeen, and University College, London. The loss of his right eye in early childhood resulted in Kenneth being unfit for army service during the First World War, and instead undertook war work at London North Western Railway’s Crewe Railway Shops. He then became an apprentice and a pupil of Crewe’s Chief Mechanical Engineer Mr. Bowen-Cooke, subsequently obtaining a certificate on technical training at Crewe Technical College. Between 1920 and 1923 Kenneth acted as an assistant to the Chief Mechanical Engineer, then Assistant Traction Superintendent and Train Ferry Supervisor on Entre dos Rios Railway in Argentina. In 1924 he joined the Jodphur-Bikanir Railway in India as the Assistant Locomotive Superintendent and then in 1928 as the Deputy Loco Superintendent building 70 coaches to his own designs. In 1929 Kenneth Cantlie was invited by the Chinese government to represent his family at the state funeral of president Sun Yat-Sen when his remains were interred in the mausoleum at Purple Mountain, Nanking and was subsequently appointed to act as an adviser to the Chinese railways by the Minister of Railways Sun Fo, son of Sun Yat-Sen. Before taking up the post in 1930, Kenneth travelled in China, Japan and the U.S. Kenneth Cantlie returned to China in 1930 as the Consulting Expert for Standardisation of Equipment and was offered the official post of the Technical Adviser to the Chinese Ministry of Railways in 1934. He contributed substantially to the rebuilding of the Chinese railways by engineering lines and designed bridges, carriages and locomotives, such as the 4-8-4 KF class locomotives. Kenneth Cantlie was appointed as the Trustee of the British Boxer Indemnity Fund in 1931 and was later awarded the Order of the Brilliant Jade. Kenneth Cantlie married Phyllis Gage-Brown (1896-1965) on 7th April 1931 at the All Saints Church in Kobe, Japan and the family lived in Shanghai and Nanking, China. The couple had three sons, the eldest being born in China: Hugh (1932), Paul (1934) and Bruce St. George Cantlie (1937). The Cantlie family stayed in Nanking until February 1937 when they left for England. The outbreak of the war and Japanese invasion in 1937 prevented Cantlie’s return to China and he stayed in London as the adviser to the Chinese Government Purchase Commission (part of the Indemnity Fund), a post he held until 1950. Cantlie acted as the manager of Caprotti Valve & Gear Ltd Associated Locomotive Equipment Ltd. between 1939 and 1948, becoming the director from the start of the Second World War. Kenneth Cantlie joined the British Army on the 2nd September 1939 and served in various positions in the War Office and invasion areas in Africa and Germany throughout the Second World War. In 1942 he was promoted as Lt. Colonel and 1946 he was posted to the German Section of Home Office in London. After the war Kenneth Cantlie acted as the Overseas Representative for the Locomotive Manufacturers’ Association (LMA) promoting British railway industry exports between 1948 and 1956. He visited and reported on the railways of various countries in North and South America, India, Europe and the Middle East. Cantlie represented the Giesl ejector in the 1950s to the 1970s in various continents including Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. He founded and co-directed a consultancy company called Verity-Orient Ltd. with another locomotive engineer George W. Carpenter. In 1956 Cantlie was invited to attend the 90th birthday anniversary of Dr Sun Yat-Sen as a guest of the Chinese Government, meeting key figures such as Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai. He returned to China again in 1957 to 1958 promoting British companies and also reporting on the trips to the British Ministry of Defence and delivering messages between Zhou Enlai and the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Kenneth Cantlie maintained strong connections to China by visiting Peking and Hong Kong until the early 1980s. Kenneth Cantlie was a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Institution of Locomotive Engineers, the Newcomen Society, the Society of Chinese Engineers and the China Society (London). He was also the founding member of the Conservative Commonwealth Council and a member of the West African Committee. Kenneth Cantlie died 11 February 1986 aged 87 after a long illness in his home, 8 Chester Row, Eaton Square, London.

1947-1962 The Transport Act 1947 nationalised virtually all British transport, including the railways, waterways, and road haulage. These were transferred to a newly-created operating body, the British Transport Commission (BTC). The British Transport Commission began operations on 1st January 1948, under Chairman Sir (later Lord) Cyril Hurcomb. At this time, the British Transport Commission acquired the “Big Four” grouped railways, with virtually all minor railways as well, together with the London Passenger Transport Board. This automatically transferred the assets of the rail companies to BTC, including ships, ports, hotels, and investments in bus, coach, and haulage companies. Two bus companies, Tilling and Scottish Motor Traction, were soon added, as well as long-distance road hauliers. The Transport Act charged the British Transport Commission with the task of charged with “integrating” various forms of transport into single public service. The British Transport Commission did not directly operate transport services. Operations were delegated to five separately appointed executives: Docks and Inland Waterways, Hotels, London Transport, Road Transport, and Railways. The Railways Executive operated under the name British Railways. In 1949, the Road Transport Executive was divided into two separate executives: Road Haulage and Road Passenger. The Commission exercised financial control over these Executives, and managed them through schemes of delegation. The Commission attempted to fulfil its statutory duty to “integrate” public transport by introducing Area Schemes. These were designed to establish regional monopolies for road passenger transport, ports, and harbours. “Integration” was also to be promoted through Charges Schemes, in which the true costs of different modes of transport were to be reflected in the charges. This was designed to attract traffic to the most economic and efficient mode of transport. The structure of Executives was dramatically altered by the Transport Act 1953, which abolished all Executives, with the exception of London Transport. Responsibility for the operation and maintenance of transport systems was delegated to the chief regional managers. The railways were reorganised into a system of area boards for each of its six regions. In September 1953, Sir Brian Robertson became Chairman. Disposal of the haulage fleet also began at this time, but a lack of buyers made this difficult. Rising costs, industrial action and competition from road traffic meant that the British Transport Commission was in financial trouble by 1955. It sought relief from this by publishing The Modernisation and Re-equipment of British Railways, a plan which proposed an investment in the railways of £1,240m over fifteen years. The main features of this plan were the replacement of steam with electric and diesel traction, the electrification of principle routes, and the introduction of new coaching stock. Despite the modernisation plan, the financial position of the British Transport Commission worsened. Two government reviews, in 1956 and 1959, concluded that the Commission was unwieldy and had an insufficiently commercial outlook. Sir Brian Robertson retired in May 1961, and was replaced by Dr Richard Beeching. The BTC was abolished by the Transport Act 1962. It was replaced with five new authorities that were answerable to the Minister of Transport: the British Railways Board, the British Transport Docks Board, the British Waterways Board, the London Transport Board, and the Transport Holding Company. Dr Beeching became chair of the British Railways Board.

Railways in Britain were nationalised under the terms of the Transport Act 1947 which came into effect on 1 January 1948. The Railway Executive, a corporate body subordinate to the British Transport Commission, was created to manage and operate the railways. It divided them into six geographical regions, largely based on the areas served by the pre-nationalisation railway companies. Between 1948 and 1998 the creation of Scotland’s railway system was under a unified system of management, for the first time, as a complete administrative unit it its own right, but also as part of the nationalized system for the whole of the United Kingdom. Between 1948 and 1952 the Chief Regional Officer of the Scottish Region (ScR) was responsible to the Railway Executive for day to day operations in his region. After the Railway Executive was abolished in 1952, he reported to the British Transport Commission (BTC). In 1963, the BTC itself was abolished and replaced by British Railways Board (BRB). Between 1963 and 1968 the Scottish Region was a statutory board in accordance with the provisions of the Transport Act 1962, subordinate to and reporting to BRB. In 1958 James Ness became the General Manager of the Scottish Region, in 1967 Thomas Forbes Cameron was the Chief Regional Officer (CRO), in 1979 Chris Green was the Chief Operating Manager (COM) and then promoted to General Manager in 1984 and in 1986 J. Cornell became the General Manager of ScotRail (the General Manager is a senior postion to the CRO and the COM). It was the first region to adopt a two-tier management structure in 1966, eliminating the divisional level from most functions. In the two-tier system the area managers and area maintenance engineers report directly to senior managers at Regional headquarters in Glasgow. The Region differentiated from the other five regions by the variety of shipping, hosting five of the highest railway summits, two underground railways with steam power and not one mile of the British Rail ScR was electrified. Railway-owned ships in Scotland became the responsibility of the Railway Executive. The ScR's main routes were Burnmouth and north on the East Coast Main Line, Caledonian, Callander & Oban Lines, Inverness to Wick and the Waverley line. With 3,625 miles of route, the new ScR was almost the same size as the Western Region representing 19% of total British Rail (BR) mileage. The two main constituents of the BR ScR were the former London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) and London North Eastern Railway (LNER) networks north of the Border. The ScR had boundaries with the North Eastern Region near Berwick-upon-Tweed and the London Midland Region near Gretna. Following the Modernisation plan in 1955, the suburban Glasgow lines were electrified in 1956 and electric power was extended to reach Glasgow in 1974 expanding the Glasgow suburban network. Three years after the programme of electrification, with poor investment, the region had to reintroduce steam on the Glasgow to Aberdeen services. During the mid 1960s many routes were closed under the "Beeching Axe", plus some after the resignation of Dr Richard Beeching - most notoriously the Waverley Line from Edinburgh to Carlisle. Lines proposed for closure in the Beeching Report, but which escaped the axe and remain open to this day are Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh, Wick and Thurso and Ayr to Stranraer. In 1974 cross-border electric Inter-City services from Glasgow Central to London Euston commenced, with the completion of the West Coast Main Line electrification project. In 1979 the Argyle Line project saw the reopening and electrification of the railway line through Glasgow Central Low Level station. The Glasgow Central to Ayr line was electrified in 1986. The one closure of this period was the Kilmacolm line in 1983. The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s and was wound-up at the end of 1992, this was caused by BR reorganising the regional structure to be abolished and replaced with business-led sectors. In 1992 Railtrack acquired the track. This process, known as ‘sectorisation’, led to far greater customer focus, this was cut short in 1994 when privatisation caused BR to split up. This sectorisation meant that the last remaining territorial unit from the regional system was ‘ScotRail’ which was a blend of sector and regional management, with a single director covering a dual role. The ScotRail brand was created by BR ScR manager Chris Green in 1983 to provide a distinctive brand for the BR network in Scotland. The brand was adopted by National Express when it took over the franchise from British Railways during privatisation in 1997. With the privatisation of BR the railway infrastructure of the ScR came under the Scotland Zone of Railtrack. Passenger services within Scotland were franchised to National Express, under the name "ScotRail Railways", although it was still referred to as ScotRail, the name that the BRB used in its later years of operation.