CALLUM Macraild, an engine driver of Fort William, died on September 25, 1998, exactly a year to the day since he had worked his last steam turn to Mallaig. He was 66.
Callum was known to thousands of summer visitors to the West Highland Line. He was always approachable and friendly to everyone. He was a great ambassador for the Fort William-Mallaig summer steam service.
To most he will be remembered as the star of the BBC series The Train Now Departing in 1988. Few will forget the ending to the programme, in which Callum is seen after a day on the engine returning to his wife Helen at their lovely home on the shores of Loch Linnhe, and then setting out in his boat with his two West Highland terriers to go fishing.
Callum's adventures in his boat were not always so peaceful, having received a Royal Humane Society award for rescuing people who had got into difficulties on the loch.
He worked the West Highland Line for 49 years, starting as a telegraph boy in 1948 and going on to become a cleaner, fireman, and driver.
He followed a long family railway tradition. His father, grandfather, two brothers, and numerous uncles were all railwaymen. A nephew continues
the dynasty.
Three special events stand out in Callum's railway career:
On October 17, 1987, he drove the first steam train on the West Highland main line for 24 years. To those of us who travelled in the train it was a wonderful day. Coal was piled high and carried in extra bags on the back of the tender. Apprehension abounded as we wondered whether the water would last and whether the locomotive would make it up Monessie Gorge, and the climbs to Corrour summit, the County March at Tyndrum, and the long leafy haul to Glen Douglas. We felt like pioneers. Needless to say Callum's enginemanship had no problems coping with these difficulties. For me it was commemorated forever in a painting presented to me by my daughters showing the Black Five taking water from a river in the middle of Rannoch Moor.
It was Callum, along with his colleague Albert Trimbrell, who drove the double-headed West Highland Centenary train on August 7, 1994. This was a day of great rejoicing, to such an extent that it ran nearly half a day late, being feted at every station along the route by pipe bands, highland dancers, and people just wanting to join in the celebrations: 2005 and 3442, with their 10 coaches, eventually did make it to Fort William, to be greeted by a civic welcome like the arrival of the first train exactly 100 years before.
The last event took place the day after Callum's death, when the annual south-running steam train which he had started 11 years earlier again ran over the West Highland Line. The leading engine carried a wreath on the smokebox door and the headboard was turned inwards. At Crianlarich all passengers disembarked on to the platform and a minute's silence was observed, marked at the beginning and end by whistle blows from the two locomotives.
Callum was a gentleman. He was taken from us by the effects of motor neurone disease. If any good can come of it, it is perhaps a relief that he was spared the many years of lingering deterioration which can affect some sufferers from that dreadful illness.
I count myself fortunate to have known Callum and to have regarded him as a friend. The sympathy of all who knew him in the railway preservation movement, and no doubt countless others, goes out to Helen, daughter Fiona, son Iain, and all of the MacRaild family. The West Highland has lost one of its most respected personalities.
www.heraldscotland.com
