Photographs of the line are few and far between, I lived beside the electrified part of the line between Coatdyke and Airdrie Station and there was quite a variety of freight, there were also passenger diversions on Sundays when the main line was closed for engineering work, I travelled over it in a Swindon Intercity DMU and also on a 2 x class 27 push-pull.
The line relied on freight, mainly coal, to sustain its existence, and as the coalfield was worked out and the mines closed, so the line became a likely candidate for closure. Towards the end of its life, the company car trains to and from the British Leyland light truck factory were the only regular users of the route (as my avitar shows), although there was an Indian Summer between 1973 and 1974 when large quantities of shale were removed from the famous bings of West Lothian by rail to Glasgow to be used in the construction of the M8 motorway. This caused the transfer of several class 25's from English depots, which became the last locomotives to be regularly stabled at Bathgate. After that the route was reduced to single track from the 16th of December 1979, then the central part between Bathgate and the sidings for the Inverhouse distillery were the first to be closed and lifted on the 15th of February 1982. Finally when the distillery ceased rail borne freight in December 1985 the track lay disused beyond Airdrie, only to be brought back to operational standard as far as Drumgelloch three and a half years later then fully reopened as part of the A2B project. That section between Airdrie and Drumgelloch must surely be the only section of line that was opened as single track, doubled, reduced to single track, closed completely, reopened as single track then doubled again! Other freight flows were Bananas to the Geest Distribution depot at Plains, I am sure there was a quarry for railway ballast somewhere and there was a regular flow of Scrap metal from Campbells yard at Clarkston to Clydesdale Steelworks, much of which was scrap BR steam and Diesel locomotives