Railwayman and writer; Born November 18, 1923; Died May 13, 2007. JIMMY Brown was the last surviving member of the management team of Inverurie Loco Works, the Aberdeenshire railway plant which fell victim to the Beeching axe in 1969.
To those who knew him, Jimmy (he was never "James") was an absolute friend, a robust writer, and a raconteur who knew how to spin a story. His Ballad of Hairy Jock concerned the colourful exploits of a Caledonian Railway driver thrashing an engine over Beattock summit, where the speed achieved depended on the strength of the fireman's back.
So popular did the tale become, that Hairy Jock and his ballad changed guises to make guest appearances on lines from Wick to Galloway, with a special outing on a royal train on the Deeside line.
The son of an Irish-born railwayman on the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway, Jimmy was born in Townhead, Glasgow, and raised in Robroyston in a house that backed on to the line from Buchanan Street Station. A colleague of his father William, impressed by the brightness of the young Brown, helped secure him a place with the LMS in 1937 in Buchanan Street telegraph office.
In 1963 he was despatched from Glasgow to a short-term post in Inverurie. On day one, he and his secretary, Margaret, fell in love.
They married and, for the rest of his life, Jimmy considered himself a citizen of the royal burgh of Inverurie.
From his teenage years, he was a semi-pro sax and clarinet player, even to running his own band. Showbiz and big bands fascinated him, and he kept in contact with folk such as band leader George Mitchell, trumpet player Freddy Clayton and Harry Secombe.
He recorded all this and more in four best-selling privately published volumes, though in north-east Scotland he is best remembered as the anonymous author Disney Kerr (try saying it with Jimmy's Springburn accent) who wrote of the fictional Portochty on the Banffshire coast.
Serialised monthly in the magazine Leopard, the stories parodied gossip and local people in a manner reminiscent of Sunset Song and Under Milk Wood. Only seriously-threatened legal action brought the series to an early end.
He was predeceased by his wife Margaret, and is survived by his daughter Marianne.
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