Transport and Communication

The roads we travel along day by day reflect the long history of man's occupation of this land: we may be following trackways first trodden by our earliest ancestors or driving along a completely new route devised for the all-conquering motor-car. It is true to say, however, that the road pattern in north-eastern Fife was established in the turnpike age at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The main roads of today were also the principal routes followed by the stage-coaches.

Later in the nineteenth century a new transport pattern appeared on the map of Fife: the railway network. The railways seemed to threaten the roads as a means of long-distance travel and, incidentally, they brought the decline and eventual demise of the Turnpike Trusts. The railway developers were over-optimistic and their enthusiasm is demonstrated in Fife in lines which are now abandoned, such as the St. Fort-Newburgh branch opened as late as 1909, and that curious and abortive project the East Fife Central Railway, opened in 1898.

The Museum has many exhibits which, directly or indirectly, are related to the history of transport in Fife. As is to be expected, the major items on display date from the time when the horse was king of the road and lord of the farm. They range from the governess cart used by the Sharp family at Hilltarvit to the minor adjuncts of travel such as bags, ships and carriage lamps and the relatively simple tools which were needed for road maintenance according to the theories of John Loudon Macadam.

Travel by bicycle is a part of transport history which the Museum can illustrate particularly well. Here are four major landmarks in the development of the bicycle: a hobby horse/Macmillan hybrid of the early nineteenth century, a bone-shaker (1865) and an Ordinary or 'Penny-farthing' of 1879 which the grandfather of the current owner is said to have ridden from Inverness to Cupar.

With the arrival of the motor-car and, more particularly, the motor-bus, the pattern of transport changed once more. It was the turn of the railway to feel the cold blast of competition from the roads. It seemed at the height of the railway closures of the 1960's that even the main line through Fife was in danger. But circumstances change; the limited supplies of oil in the world make the future of the car less certain; alternative and older forms of transport are considered; the railway train, the tramcar and even the humble bicycle.