Connecting CRASSOC to their Professional Grandfathers

John McKay was unusual among his peers in that he kept a consistent written account of his daily life as a fireman at St. Rollox.  A dedicated steam enthusiast from the age of eleven, when he was awed by the sight of ‘Duchess of Devonshire’ working the 1.15 ex Central past Victoria Street in Rutherglen, John’s diaries record his life as an engineman with an enthusiast’s eye.    For more than a decade he records daily rhythms, working practices, locomotive movements, colleagues, incidents, and creeping changes across the depot.  His archive is a rare and valuable record of lived experience of an operator in the last days of steam.

MoSR’s Hamish, David, and Vicky delivered two talks to members of the Caledonian Railway Association at their annual meeting in Carlisle, both of which drew on McKay’s diaries. Hamish and David reconstructed St. Rollox as McKay would have known it from the footplate, demonstrating how different photographic collections intersect to help us reinterpret long‑vanished industrial environments.  The diaries also preserve vivid stories about McKay’s colleagues. After dinner, Vicky shared her research into the social identity and culture of care among enginemen at St. Rollox.

Copies of both talks are available on request.  Thank you to CRASSOC for a very informative and enjoyable day.

‘CAHG at 5’ digital exhibition

This year CAHG are celebrating their fifth birthday with an exploration of how community archives help sustain and express Scotland’s living culture.  Living practices passed down through the generations are central to how people understand who they are and where they belong but are often undocumented or overlooked.  The ‘CAHG at 5’ exhibition highlights the vital role community-led archives such as ours play in safeguarding living heritage and supporting the transmission of knowledge, identity, and cultural expression for present and future generations.

Our curated contribution, which includes diaries, photographs, and oral history from the Fireman John McKay collection as well as film of John’s mentees using the techniques he passed to them, showcases the rich diversity of living traditions discoverable in our enginemen’s collections and kept alive on the BKR. Each object selected for inclusion reflects on how our working community here at Bo’ness records, remembers, and sustains Scotland’s railway heritage, capturing its culture not as something fixed in the past, but as something still actively practised and shared today.

Explore the exhibition here.