This photograph shows cranes loading up sandstone onto trucks on a rail track.
The Permian and Triassic sandstones of Annandale and Nithsdale were widely used as building stone. At the peak of the sandstone quarrying industry in the late 1800s almost 200,000 tons of sandstone were being quarried each year. Although this stone was widely used locally, large amounts were sent out of the area. Many of the late Victorian buildings of Glasgow and Edinburgh are built of sandstone from this area, as are the 'brownstones' of New York.