The view from the bridge at Stonecouple, with a train travelling towards Edinburgh. To the right (north) of the railway line is a flooded quarry, its presence betrayed only by the reflections of dead trees. I thought perhaps it was for material for building the railway, but it isn't marked on the 1856 six-inch map, though there is a smaller quarry shown south of the railway here. This quarry is on the 1895 edition of the six-inch map. It is unnamed on both.
Writing in 1922, Henry Mowbray Cadell, in his 'Rocks of West Lothian' says that the Pardovan Sandstone was quarried here, but that the quarry was abandoned and flooded. The sandstone is at least 220 feet thick, and dips westwards at about 25º. The stone is easy to work, but has not proved durable; Cadell says that the
NT0077 : Victoria Hall (built in 1888-9), and the gates of Linlithgow Academy, were built of it, but even by Cadell's time, just three decades later, the stonework was crumbling.