Charlie Lynch: Riding the rails of the South Western Railway

The National

7 hours ago

Close to his heart – and his home – was the Glasgow and South Western Railway (G&SWR), colloquially known to many as the Sou' West.
To understand 'Davie' Smith's writing, it is first necessary to conceive of a railway company which has not existed for nearly a century.
The G&SWR was a medium-sized enterprise which, as its name suggests, served the south-west of Scotland from the company's inception in 1850 to its amalgamation in 1922 with numerous other companies to form the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS).
Although the G&SWR and its grandiose station at St Enoch in Glasgow are long gone, significant parts of its network remain today, notably its former main line from Glasgow to Dumfries via Kilmarnock, and, struggling on, the once heavily used route from Girvan to Stranraer. Today, its memory and archive are tended to by the G&SWR Association.
Smith was the premier scholarly expert and writer on the subject of the G&SWR. He observed operations and spoke to railway workers from the turn of the 1920s to the end of steam traction in the 1960s. But who was he?
Smith was born in 1900 in Dalmellington, Ayrshire, the son of James W Smith, a local schoolmaster. Many of his mother's relatives were employed in the local ironworks and its associated railways and mines.
In the early years of his life, Smith was seriously ill with pernicious anaemia and was not expected to survive. His physical frailty explains why he did not follow relatives into working in transport or industry.
Little is known of his early life, but by his early 20s he was already keenly interested in the local railway scene and recording what he saw.
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An early notebook from 1919 charts what may have been his first trip out of his immediate home area on to the now-vanished railway system in Galloway, including a journey to Whithorn, Kirkcudbright and Dumfries. Being a railway fan was then a mainstream hobby for boys and men, particularly before the arrival of television in the 1960s.
However, Smith was to progress further than many in his particular dedication to the G&SWR, which included knowledge of its staff and keeping annotated record cards on its steam locomotives.
The railway network was considerably bigger than it is today, and its operation could provide great interest. The railway companies were substantial employers and operated a wide variety of stock which carried everything from passengers to horses to newspapers.
Smith's employment in a library fostered his interest in literature and writing, as well as record keeping. Unusually for the times, he remained unmarried until later life. Smith – who died in 1985 – met his wife, Margaret, in the 1960s. Ian Middleditch, who met Smith around that time, recalls that he was 'very quietly spoken, and always full of tales which he related with a twinkle in his eye'.
He added: 'The way he spoke was very chatty, and he always gave the impression that he knew the people in his stories personally, even if some of the tales related to incidents long before he was born!'
Smith's railway 'tales' were first published in the railway press during the early 1930s and continued to appear into the 1940s. According to one contemporary, his writing was a radical departure from the sometimes humdrum style of other railway authors.
Typically, they were lively pieces of narrative in which detailed information about trains was supplemented by the words of railwaymen rendered in either local dialect or the Scots language. They preserve in literary form the culture and 'folk memory' of railway workers and tell of the sometimes less than harmonious relationship between employees, management and officialdom – all related in a rather sardonic style.
Smith's narratives were based upon oral reminiscences supplemented by personal recollection. He was keen that the accuracy of the 'tales' closely followed their telling, revising them for subsequent publications with input from those 'who were there'.
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In 1962, earlier magazine articles were compiled into his first book, Tales Of The Glasgow And South Western Railway, which dealt with the late 19th century, before he was a personal observer. A sequel, published in 1980, Legends Of The Glasgow And South Western Railway In LMS Days, brought his tales into the 1930s and 1940s.
Taken as a whole, they give a history of railway operations in south-west Scotland and the tenacity of those who worked sometimes dangerously long hours in a harsh and unforgiving workplace using relatively primitive technology.
During the 19th century, Smith tells us, men who worked on the railway aged prematurely, with an engine driver about to turn 50 considered ancient.
At this time, accidents and 'near misses' were occasioned by exhausted staff falling asleep on the job, while in the earlier tales, fast driving and questionable brakes much feature. No rose-tinted spectacles here.
There are some lurid accounts of dangers and disasters, often on the line to Stranraer.
This was a challenging route to operate in the days of steam, featuring severe gradients as well as speed restrictions which were not always adhered to – on occasion with disastrous results – and which groaned under heavy use during the Second World War.
Another adversary was the weather, and there are accounts of endurance by man and machine as well as trials by rain, wind and snow.
Through all of this is seen the determination of railway workers to do their jobs in often difficult circumstances. And Smith was there to record them.
Charlie Lynch thanks Ian Middleditch and the G&SWR Association for help with researching this article