Full steam ahead

This is a grand occasion: the first time since 5 May, 1956, that a passenger service has travelled from Bo'ness, on the south bank of the Firth of Forth, inland to Manuel. The line has been brought back into use thanks to the considerable efforts of the Scottish Railway Preservation Society. A group of volunteers, passionate about the age of steam, have been working on the project since 1979. Now, at last, the moment has arrived.

"It really is a great day for us," says Fred Landery, the station master, who has been an SRPS member for 35 years. "All the work that our volunteers have put in, the effort of building the line up to Manuel, has paid off. We're seeing the fruits of our endeavours today."

In a pleasant case of serendipity, the SRPS was founded in 1961, the very same year that the Morayshire was taken out of service and given the rather undignified task of powering the Slateford Laundry in Edinburgh. Almost half a century later, the locomotive is experiencing a proud second life, pulling the 128 passengers who have tickets for this historic journey.

Bill Warren is the driver. He's enjoying a second life, too. He's 68 with a peaked cap, bright blue eyes and neat grey moustache. Though he seems an undemonstrative sort, there's no mistaking his pleasure at being given the honour of driving this train. From South Wales, he worked in the early 1960s as a fireman on locomotives travelling to and from Pontypool Road Station, but he left the trade for lorry driving and later became a newsagent. Fans of Ivor the Engine on meeting Warren will be irresistibly reminded of Jones the Steam.

"I was a youngster when I started on the railway," he says. "Eighteen year old and it was just a job to me then. Course, my attitude has changed now. It's become more like a religion. Oh aye, you can't beat it. Steam engines are living creatures. They've got a personality. Each engine, even if it's the same class, performs differently. It also feels like you've got immense power at your fingertips."

The Morayshire was built in 1928. To stand inside the driver's cab is to experience sensations from a vanished age. There's the smell of oil and smoke, the feel of brass levers in your hands, the chuff and hiss and clang; most noticeable of all is the heat of the firebox, which really keeps off the late morning chill.

Today, the firebox is the province of Bob Lockhart, 64, a retired director of a warehousing company. "I've been interested in steam engines as long as I can remember," he says. "The railway went along the bottom of my garden when I was growing up in Kirkcaldy."

"We're old boys," laughs Bill Warren, "with big toys."

The fire was lit in the Morayshire at 10pm the previous night and is now blazing away nicely. Lockhart keeps topping it up with coal from the tender. This requires a good deal of dexterity in addition to brute strength. It's not an easy job when the train's moving, especially a shoogly engine like this one. "The art," he says, with the lugubrious air of one who has dropped large lumps of coal on his feet, "is to make sure you can get your shovel through the flap."

Bo'ness Station looks old but is, in a sense, fairly new, having been developed on a greenfield site since 1979. The historic buildings and bridge have been acquired from various parts of the railway system that were shutting down.

This is a place where heritage is valued and picked over in obsessive detail. A shop run out of an old Royal Mail carriage sells vintage timetables. These contain information about stations which are now gone, and can be cross-referred with vintage photographs. If the sun is visible in a picture of, say, an engine standing at Princes Street station in Edinburgh, then it may be possible to determine the time of day and thus, by consulting the timetable, establish where the train was going.

On the Bo'ness platform, with its old luggage carts and Brief Encounter ambience, the station master raises his right hand in the air to signal that he is satisfied for the train to leave. Robert Wright, the guard, who works through the week as a teacher, lifts his green flag. It's time for the Morayshire to depart. "You'd better hold on tight," says Bill Warren, pulling the cord that operates the train's whistle. "It's a rough rider."

He's not kidding. It is quite a struggle to stay upright as the train moves down the tracks. Very exciting to be in the cab, though. Crowds on the platform wave and take photographs as the Morayshire moves off.

Though the distance between Bo'ness and Manuel is only five miles, passing through the landscape feels like travelling back through Scotland's industrial history. Across the water, looking strangely beautiful set against the Ochils, is Longannet power station. We also pass the site of Kinneil colliery, the Birkhill fireclay mine and Kinneil House. In 1769, in the grounds of that grand mansion, James Watt developed a more efficient steam engine. Strange to think that if it wasn't for the work done at that house, just visible through the trees, this train might not be travelling the rails today.

The SRPS collection includes 25 steam locomotives, 28 diesel and electric locomotives, 65 carriages, 75 wagons and over 1,600 small artefacts. The members who love steam trains tend not to mix with those who love the more modern locomotives. It's a Montagues and Capulets thing.

Locomotives are not the only thing the SRPS preserves. This is also a place where heavy engineering skills, increasingly rare in Scotland, are valued and passed on. The workshop is a tremendous place, full of hulking drills, bulky lathes and other impressive machines. There is some pessimism that not enough young people want to get involved, and that the ability to do this sort of work might die out with the present membership. But steps are being taken to address this. Just last week, four young men were taken on as trainees under the Department of Work and Pensions' Future Jobs scheme.

I get out at Kinneil and enter the carriages. Seated at a table, a map spread out between them, are Canon Bill Brockie, 73, and his friend Dr John Law, 74, both from Edinburgh. A retired physicist and Episcopalian priest, one might call them eminent citizens, but they describe themselves as "nutters". They share a deep love of trains.

Law is a patrician-looking gentleman. "Architecture is said to be frozen music," he says. "Well, railway locomotives are architecture that moves." He remembers with great fondness the railway journeys of his youth, and moved to Scotland from his native England in part because he had fallen in love with particular west coast routes. "Steam trains are like the church," says Brockie, "noisy, smelly, out of date and rather splendid."

In the next carriage, I find Stuart Montgomery, 45, travelling with his five-year-old son, Jonny. The wee boy has on an engine driver's cap and is in no doubt what it is he likes about the trains: "I like everything." For his father, the interest goes back to a family connection. "During the war, my grandfather was an engine driver with the LMS. That's London Midland Scottish, but he called it the Lord's My Shepherd. He loved the trains."

Speaking to members of the Scottish Railway Preservation Society, there is a strong sense that their passion for trains is often a way of maintaining some kind of contact with a lost loved one. Many tell me of dads and grandads who worked in the railways.

Tom Willison, 55, owns a garage in Tayport, but travels to Bo'ness by motorbike to restore and drive the trains. "My father was real proper railwayman," he says. "He loved his job, and everything was done spot on. You've got to be disciplined when you're doing this job and make sure you keep the standards up."

Though the members of the SRPS are doing this as a hobby, it's a lot like having a second job. The drivers and guards must obtain professional qualifications, and the safety standards here are exactly the same as for Network Rail. Everyone is aware all the time that steam locomotives have the potential to be deadly. So for those people wearing the old fashioned uniforms, it's not simply fancy dress.

"I'm absolutely proud of the uniform," says Fred Landery, 65, who is wearing a peaked cap with his title, Station Master, picked out in gold braid. "That's in the tradition of railwaymen – proud to work for the railway."

By noon, the Morayshire is back at Bo'ness Station, and the passengers disembark, happy to have made a little history in the most pleasurable way. Many of the people travelling today did the back-breaking restoration work which allowed the line to Manuel to reopen – for instance, pulling up around 1,000 rotten sleepers and putting down new.

The journey has provided a taste of the past, and waiting on the platform there is, perhaps, a glimpse of the future. Twelve-year-old Liam McCallum has been a member of the society for five months and – in honour of the occasion – is wearing a dark uniform and black peaked cap.

"I'm hoping," says Liam, "to be a guard one day."