Transporting Royals

Monday’s Traces Through Time feature with photographs of Rosyth brought back memories for Alex Wishart of Kirkcaldy.

“I was a train driver for many years and I was driving the Royal train, carrying Prince Andrew and the Duchess of York, in the 1980s. The train stopped overnight at the dock yard in Rosyth and the Royal couple spent the night aboard the train before carrying on with their journey by other transport the next day,” he says.

“I loved every minute of working on the trains. I started out on Thornton station in Fife just before the war ended and when I turned 16 I worked in the engine station as a fireman, before I became a driver.

“The depot shut in 1992 and I was made redundant just a couple of years before I would have retired.”