This site contains photographs taken, mostly, in the 1960s of examples of aircraft that visited Scottish airports - mainly Turnhouse (Edinburgh), but also Renfrew, Prestwick, Scone, Leuchars, Abbotsinch and Lossiemouth - plus some taken elsewhere. As the site develops photographs will be added.
In 1960, I was a wee laddie of 14, with an Agfa Silette 35mm fixed-lense camera, who cycled regularly to Turnhouse to "watch the planes". It is fortunate that the camera's lense was fixed focal-length, otherwise I would have probably cropped the shots much more closely and lost a lot of the surrounding atmosphere. Even more fortunately, today, I still have all the negatives - which are standing up fairly well to the ravages of time.
If you are too young to have been around at the time (!) - please don't get the idea that these aircraft are representative of daily life - on the whole, they are the highlights, particularly the Turnhouse photographs. At Turnhouse, routinely, life was Air Experience/UAS Chipmunks, RAF Ansons, BEA Viscounts, Ferranti Flying Unit movements and the occasional Auster and Tiger Moth. That may sound ok now - as most of these types are virtually extinct, but they were fairly hum-drum then. Having said that, movements were dominated by piston types - that seemed to have a little more character than many of today's jets.
Use the links at the top or bottom of this page to navigate beteween airfields.
I hope you enjoy what you see. Ah, the memories!
This site was first created in January 2003 and has been extensively extended since - and I'll keep looking for images to add (when I can find the time!).
Having succumbed to the wonders of digital photography in 2003, I have started taking the occasional photograph of aircraft. Some recent images are at AND NOW ....
Colin Lourie,
Edinburgh
You may contact me at: colinlourie@btinternet.com
The pages and individual images may take a little while to load, so please be patient.
Please feel free to download any images for private (non-commercial) use. Commercial use is not permitted.
Please include an acknowledgement where-ever these images are used.
I do not provide hard-copy or high resolution digital images.
The 1950s Turnhouse terminal building closed in the 1970s when the new terminal was built on the South-West side of the airfield. But the "old" terminal building continued to have a long active life as offices for a variety of enterprises. This is how it looked shortly before it was demolished in the 1990s.
Not a photograph from the 1960s, but a bit of history nevertheless. The day the Edinburgh Airport fire training Trident
was cut up by a man with a chainsaw - 26 February 1996.
For a comprehensive history of Edinburgh Airport, read Keith McCloskey's excellent book:
Edinburgh Airport - A History
ISBN: 0 7524 3805 0
