I took up my appointment in Fairlie in the early autumn of 1960, but because so much work had to be done to the station house by way of cleaning and redecoration we didn't get moved in till just before Christmas. In the meantime I had to stay in digs again. By this time I had a car and was able to travel home every weekend fairly easily. The station house must have been bought by the then Glasgow & South Western Railway Company when the line was being made, as it was very old, much older than the railway. It was situated on high ground above the entrance to a tunnel, which is about a mile long and takes the railway line right through and underneath the village, towards the pier and Largs. It starts just at the north end of the station, the house garden being right above the entrance. At the other end of the tunnel, quite near the Church and War Memorial, was Fairlie Pier junction. where the trains were diverted either to the pier or Largs.
The day we flitted, in mid-December, was a beautiful winter's day with bright sunshine, but freezing cold. By mid-day the removal men were getting on well so we set off from St Monans by car for Fairlie. And that was some journey! By the time we got to Leven, down came the fog, a real peasouper, and, into the bargain, there was black ice on the roads. It was a nightmare, we had to travel very slowly and we came across various cars that had skidded and landed in the ditch. It took nearly five hours for what should have been a two and a half hour journey. It wasn't till we passed Kilbirnie that the sun broke through again. It was like heaven. We spent that night in Mrs Duncan's house; she was the lady I had been staying with before we could move in.
Ian had just started High School at Waid Academy, Anstruther where a large new extension had been built, and he was quite chuffed to be going to High School with all the facilities it had to offer. Sandy was still attending Primary School in St Monans, and very soon a posse of boys were at our door to escort him to school every morning. Elspeth and I were a bit worried about the effect of changing schools would have on them, but we needn't have worried, they both seemed to settle down quite well, though I think that Ian wasn't too pleased to be going to what at that time was only a three year Higher Grade school at Largs - and an old school into the bargain, and Sandy wanted to go back to his pals in St Monans.
But youngsters soon make new friends and they got used to the idea of living some place other than St Monans. We joined the local church, St Margarets, which was nearer our house than the "Auld Kirk", St Pauls. We decided that we would keep quiet about our church and other activities at St Monans, so that we could have a time of settling in without getting involved in local affairs. We were still laying the linoleum in the Station House when Donald Mann, the then Church treasurer, came to visit us - armed with his seat rent book, a copy of Life and Work, free-will offering envelopes and a Deed of Covenant form! Soon after that, the Minister, Dr Gordon Weir, asked if I would like to become a member of the Deacon's Court (the equivalent of the Congregational Board in the Auld Kirk). Of course I had to tell him that I was an Elder, so I was duly inducted to the Eldership in St Margarets.
It took us quite a while to settle down in Fairlie, the change from the strong air of the East to the softer air of the West, made us feel a bit sleepy headed until we got used to it. The village seemed to be divided into three different parts, at the North end were the Council houses - the 'scheme' as it was called by the rest of the village, then the older houses in the middle of the village with privately built and comparatively new houses on the high ground to the East, and then to the South was the Montgomerie complex of houses, most of the occupiers commuted to work. A large number were employees of the Nobel Division of the ICI Explosives Factory at Ardeer, near Stevenston. In fact ICI were the largest employer in the area at that time, and two trains ran every morning from Largs to a private station within the Ardeer complex, with of course, return trains at close of work.
The Station and station house were situated between the Montgomerie area and the rest of the village, it felt a bit like living in No Man's Land, as we had no immediate next-door neighbours. The house itself had been badly neglected by previous tenants and required to be thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom and completely redecorated. The Railway Estate department at Headquarters helped a bit, only decorating three rooms and allowing us 6d. (2½ p.) a roll for wallpaper! We had many a battle to try and have what we thought were essential improvements done to the house. The wiring was suspect, and our request for rewiring was turned down, until we discovered that all the sockets were wired the wrong way round. Fairlie had had no gas supply at all and heating and lighting had to be carried out using paraffin as a fuel and cooking on the coal fire, There was no cooker unit and as a 'Triplex' type fireplace, complete with oven, was installed in the kitchen, that was considered to be enough for cooking facilities. We arranged for a cooker power unit to be installed at our own expense. When the house had originally been wired, the round pinned 5 amp and 15 amp sockets and plugs had been installed. The Railway always insisted that any replacements had to be the same as the original, so the old system was installed. The 13-amp plug was coming into use at that time and the cooker unit we got was of the 13-amp type.
Our biggest problems with the house were dampness and cold. It was a large stone built house with no under-floor ventilation, the kitchen floor, the hall and the staircase were all of stone. It was virtually impossible to heat the house, even with three coal fires going. The rooms, six of them plus a kitchen, bathroom and WC, were all large with very high ceilings. During the winter months the water literally ran down he walls, and, on top of that when there was an East wind, all the fires blew back and it was nothing to find the hearth full of soot in the morning. But it did have a commanding view over the Firth of Clyde looking towards Arran and the Cumbraes. The two front rooms had beautiful corniced ceilings with centrepieces. When we did leave the house an order was put on it to be brought up to standard as a condition of its being sold. We could have bought it for a song but couldn't afford, at that time, to do what was necessary to put it right.
There were times when I wondered if I had done the right thing in moving to Fairlie, we were strangers in a strange place. The village was even smaller than St Monans, we knew nobody, but things gradually improved. Our nearest neighbour, Winnie Hogarth, a war widow, ages with ourselves lived in the end house of a terraced row, just across the street, or rather lane as it was, from us, who became a good friend. We then made very good friends with a couple (Aileen and Bill Miller) whose children were ages with our two. Not only that, I found that I was a lot busier at work than I ever had been at previous stations, having two places to supervise. Fairlie High station which served the village had a frequent train service on the line between Largs and Glasgow St Enoch station and the station was well used both by commuters to Glasgow and day trippers from the city. There was also a small goods yard, where the local coal merchant, Willie Allan, ran his business.
The pier station, of course was only busy on the arrival and departure of the steamers. Just before I took over at Fairlie, the Caledonian Steam Packet Company had put their first 'roll on, roll off' ferry, the Glen Sannox, on the Fairlie/Arran run, in 1957. Before that cars were run on to the ferry over two planks of wood - a precarious business! The passenger train service consisted of two trains in each direction for every Arran ferry, to and from Glasgow and Kilmarnock. Many of the trains from Glasgow consisted of two portions, one part for the Pier and one for Largs. Of course at that time the steam trains were still running and an engine would arrive at Fairlie High to await the arrival of the boat train where it was split in two, the front portion going on to Largs, then the other engine was attached to convey the other half to the Pier. It was all quite complicated and a bit laborious. The biggest problem was ensuring that all the passengers were in the correct part of the train; and, on occasions someone, despite our efforts landed up at the wrong destination.
The advent of diesel and later electric trains, cut down on a lot of this work. The Arran ferry wasn't the only steamer service at Fairlie. There was a regular parcels and freight service to Millport, on the Isle of Cumbrae, and, during the summer months there was a Campbeltown service on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays as well as various excursion sailings.
In addition to the parcels traffic by passenger train, Fairlie Pier was the tranship point for freight. Every morning, at 5 am, the freight train arrived, mostly with traffic in containers (which had been specially designed for this job) containing 'sundries' traffic. These containers were off-loaded from the wagons by means of a mobile crane and placed on to trolleys, which were hooked together and towed down the pier on to the steamer, by means of a small Lansing Bagnall tractor. These trolleys, cars, etc. were driven up a ramp, which was dropped down from the side of the vessel, on to a turntable, which allowed the vehicles to be parked in its bowels. The Glen Sannox also had its own wee tractor for towing the trolleys on to the pier. As well as the 'sundries' traffic, there were some peculiar and sometimes awkward loads to be handled plus lots of fertilisers in wagonloads for the farms on Arran. There was also a considerable amount of livestock movement (mainly sheep). As you can imagine, that had problems. of its own.
The goods staff consisted of a foreman, a crane driver, a tractor driver and a porter, while on the passenger side there were two shifts of a station foreman and two porters. In the booking office were Jimmy Jones, the senior clerk and Willie Kindness the junior. Jimmy appeared to have very little ambition as he stayed at the pier until he retired, never seeking promotion. Willie, on the other hand was keen to get on. He was interested in the shipping side of things and soon we began to lose him during the summer months while he went and 'did his stint' as Purser on the Maid of the Loch on Loch Lomond. Eventually he got a permanent job with Caledonian McBrayne at Gourock and did quite well for himself in that establishment.
The Pier Junction Signalbox was manned by two real characters, both first class signalmen, Willie White and 'Sanny' Lewis, completely different in their ways but united in always trying to catch me out on my knowledge of the Rule Book and train signalling regulations.
The staff at Fairlie High station (as it was called then, now, just Fairlie) consisted of the Clerkess, Isa Mackie, junior clerk Dave MacFarlane, two porters, Willie Reid and John (Bobby) Howes and one signalman, John Boyd. The station offices, waiting rooms, etc., on the 'down' platform were lit by electricity, but the station platforms still used paraffin lamps. They were large Tilley type lamps, which were hoisted up the lampposts. It was quite a large part of the porter's duties looking after these lamps, as well as all the signal lamps. On the 'up' platform was a small brick built waiting room, with a small coal burning stove for heating purposes, and woe betide us if there was not a good going fire there on the cold winter mornings. My time was spent between the High station and the pier and as it was at bit over a mile between the two points, I was supplied with a bicycle as a means of transportation.
In 1960, when I arrived at Fairlie two large projects were under way. The nuclear power station at Hunterston was being built and most of the traffic originally came via West Kilbride station but the steelwork was delivered from the Pier station, making use of the mobile crane, as did tons and tons of Georgian wired glass, which was used in the construction. I got quite friendly with the foreman of the company doing the glasswork and he gave us glass, cut to size, from his offcuts and breakages to build a greenhouse for the station. Porter Stan Gardner and myself grew our own bedding plants in the new greenhouse and developed plots on the embankment, on the up platform, for planting out the seedlings. I am pleased to say that we won many prizes for the Best Kept Station Garden competition.
After the power station had been in commission for a time, the radioactive waste was required to be disposed of. It had been kept under water on site, but, eventually, it was required to be sent to Sellafield for processing. A 50-ton overhead gantry crane was erected at Fairlie High station to handle the huge lead lined steel 'flasks' containing the radioactive material. These were loaded, at regular intervals, on to special low bogie wagons and conveyed by freight train under intensive safety conditions. This original nuclear power station is now (1987) time expired and has been decommissioned. Another (Hunterston B) had been built and has still quite a few years to run.
The other project , on our arrival at Fairlie, was the construction of a NATO Boom Defence base, right next to Fairlie Pier. This, I think, was to be a base to provide a defence against any future enemy underwater boats from gaining access up the Firth of Clyde. The place was fully equipped to cope with an emergency, living quarters for permanent staff was provided for such an occasion. All the Boom Defence equipment was stored and maintained there, huge chain-link nets, outsize anchors, mooring buoys etc so a and had new pier had tbuilt to accommodate the Boom Defence vessels. The depot was built on land on which at one time were the engine sheds and sidings, as the Pier station had been the terminus for several years before the line was extended to Largs. The people of Largs were not at all pleased not to get the railway to their town as the Earl of Glasgow, who owned the land, would not allow the railwy line to be extended. Eventually the Railway people had to reclaim land from the sea and as a result a large part of that line runs right next to the sea, or perhaps to be more accurate, the Firth of Clyde.
Before, during and immediately after World War II, the old engine sheds were used as a storage place for various small craft during the winter months, there had also been a kippering kiln, used at the height of the herring-fishing season in days gone by.
Gradually we settled down in Fairlie and began to make a few friends, mainly, as I have mentioned, through the boys' school friends and our Church connections. It was a completely different life style from that at St Monans. I was kept busy at my work at the station and the pier and eventually Elspeth got a part time job in the Post Office. I, as usual, got involved in Church work, became Sunday School Superintendent and later Covenant Convenor and then Treasurer.
All this was very rewarding and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also became a member of the Conservative & Unionist Committee and had some very happy times in that service. The Conservative Christmas Ball was the social event of the year. There was always a waiting list for tickets as the accommodation was limited in the Fairlieburne Hotel, until a year or two later, when an extension was built, with a lovely dance floor. During the winter there was a dance there just about every month, the Bankers, the Young Farmers, the Police to name but a few. We went to them all with our friends, John and Ann Downie, Bob and Ann McMath, Norman and Ella Hooper, Monty and Elsie Muir. Apart from the dances, we used to visit each other in turn for, perhaps a musical evening, a games evening or just for a get together, as well as going out occasionally for a meal. Happy days indeed!!
Unfortunately the Fairlieburne Hotel no longer exists. A number of years ago it changed hands, and after a few more changes it was sold to a developer who demolished it and built flats. I now live in a flat, facing southwest, overlooking the site of the old Fairlieburne Hotel and have a magnificent view across the water to Arran and the Cumbraes, and we also have some of the most beautiful sunsets, which are quite out of this world.
Chapter 10 The Stationmaster
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