IT used to be said that every school boy wanted to grow up to be a train driver.
That was certainly the case with Jock Hay.
He remembers being asked by his teacher at school what he wanted to be and giving just that answer. Unlike most would-be engine drivers, however, he achieved that ambition, but did so only after a hard apprenticeship shovelling coal on steam trains as they moved vital supplies during the war.
More than 70 years on from the start of his railway career as a fireman/cleaner, his Lochardil home has plenty of clues to his former occupation with models, photographs and paintings of steam and diesel engines.
"I’m well versed on my railways," Jock laughed.
It was 16th November 1940 when Jock’s railway career began at a busy Forres station where he made regular runs over the now defunct Dava line to Speyside. Defunct, but not forgotten.
On Thursday 13th October Jock and old friend and colleague Jimmy Gray will be special guests at a celebration marking 150 years of the Forres-Dava line at the Falconer Museum in Forres.
"It was a long drag from Forres to Dava," Jock recalled.
"The climb started on leaving Forres to a couple of miles past Dava and then downhill to Grantown-on-Spey west."
The two stations also had very different characters, and while Dava was a quiet country station, in those days long before the Dr Beeching cuts closed rail services across the country, Forres alone had 14 drivers and even more firemen and firemen/cleaners.
"Forres station was a hive of activity in those days," Jock said.
"It was a thriving concern when you think of the number of men employed. It warranted a station master, clerks and porters and even had a Menzies bookstall. Dava, on the other hand, was a bleak stormy place in the winter and often passenger trains would get stuck in the snow. There were even times when the snow ploughs got derailed at the top of Dava."
Perhaps making it easier for Jock to get a foothold in his chosen career was the manpower shortage caused by the outbreak of war.
"They were looking for men then because a lot of boys had gone away to the war," he acknowledged.
"That’s when I started my railway career. The railways did a very essential job during the war years keeping the country going."
During those busy war years, shifts could be long.
Jock recalls heading out for a run at 6am and not returning until midnight — all for a weekly wage of just £9.
"But I never went out with a girn on my face in the morning," he added.
"I enjoyed my work and I had a happy life on the railway.
"We were like a clan. If you had a driver, you could be working with that man for months on end, so you had to get on. You had to work hard to get the steam up because we were working heavy trains in those days."
It was only because he was young and healthy Jock reckons that he was able to cope with the physically demanding role of fireman as he kept the engine supplied with coal.
"It kept you fit shovelling all that coal," he laughed.
"When you look back at it now, it was just slavery. You had to keep the driver in steam, so you couldn’t just sit back when you felt like it."
As well as having to cope with the steep hills of the Highlands, the steam engines could have a lot of goods to haul.
"On a steam run you had quite a heavy train," Jock said.
"You could have 20 or 30 wagons behind you."
Even more hectic than Forres was Aviemore where Jock transferred in 1941 after qualifying as a fireman.
"You had 100 staff in Aviemore. It was a busy, busy place," he said.
Post-war nationalisation in 1948 added to Jock’s workload. That brought the Boat of Garten station and Aviemore under the one company for the first time and Jock and other firemen would have to cover for their Boat of Garten colleagues.
"We’d cycle from Aviemore to Boat, fire up the train to Craigellachie, then back to Boat and cycle home," he said.
Remarkably, Jock still has the Raleigh bicycle he used on that journey which he bought in 1946 and later used to commute to work at Inverness station.
It was in Aviemore in 1951 that Jock married his late wife Gladys. Appropriately for a man so devoted to his job, the couple’s life started in a cottage built from railway sleepers by the father of his friend Jimmy Gray. Jimmy, for whom Jock served as best man, still lives there today.
Jock qualified as a driver in 1955, but with two children — Ann, who now lives in Kiltarlity and the late John — he was unwilling to move from Aviemore for his career, so it was not until 1960 that he officially became a driver.
"But Beeching came along then and played hell with the railways," Jock added.
"The Aviemore depot closed and I had to get up and get going. I left Aviemore on the sixth of the sixth 1966 — I always remember that date — and went to Perth for a year and six months."
By that time diesel engines were rapidly replacing the steam engines on which Jock had begun his railway career.
"It was a big change for a lot of the older boys," he said.
"Some of them took pretty bad with it, but the problem with the diesels is that when they came in they had too many different types."
Though he also looks back fondly on the memory of speeding across Culloden Moor at 75mph in the driving seat of the HS125 "Highland Chieftain", like most rail enthusiasts, Jock has a special affection for the days of steam.
"I had a damn good engine — 5138," he said.
"In Aviemore during the war years, we had two London Midland Scottish (LMS) Class 5 engines, 5138 and 5136. The Class 5s were known to everybody as the Black Fives. There were 840 Black Fives built and every one of them had their own characteristics. 5136 and 5138 were two different engines entirely. You could step on the footplate of 5136 and definitely know you were on a different engine. That was the thing with the steam engines. They all felt individual."
Many years later while visiting his late son, Major John McKenzie Hay of the Royal Logistics Corps, the pair of them went to a local model shop in Southsea in search of a model Black Five.
"We never said a number and the man in the shop just lifted up his hand and took down a box," Jock recalled.
"We looked in the box and what do you think we saw there? 5138."
After 18 months in Perth, Jock successfully applied for a transfer to Inverness and in the summer of 1968 the family settled in the recently built Hilton area.
In 1984, by which time Jock was driving the high speed HS125, he successfully applied for the post of one of two locally based diesel instructors. Unlike the days of steam — "The old steam drivers would never give their firemen a go," Jock said — Jock and his colleague would take the new drivers out and give them a good long run.
"All those young boys are driving now," Jock added.
Many of them still keep in touch and visit Jock, who retired from the railway in 1987, but aside from his interest in all matters rail, Jock has a less expected hobby.
In the evening he will put on some music and sit down and work away at a tapestry.
"Well, you can’t watch television all the time and it keeps the mind active," the 88-year old explained.
But how did he get involved in making tapestries in the first place?
Perhaps it is something to do with the subject of his first ever tapestry in 1989.
Yes — a steam engine.
