Scotsman Obituaries: Allan McLean, Scottish journalist who became a respected voice in defence of Britain’s rail network

Allan McLean, who has died after a long illness, was a witty and charismatic journalist with a knack for being in the right place at the right time.

The son of the late Andrew and Mary McLean, he was educated at Corstorphine Primary School and then the Royal High School on Calton Hill, where he was friends with the future Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. From the hill he could see not just Waverley Station but the plethora of breweries which were then such a feature of that part of Edinburgh. These would be key to shaping his future career.

After school he embarked on his first job in journalism, learning his trade on the Dalkeith Advertiser before joining the Leith Gazette and then the Edinburgh Evening News. The 1970s saw him joining British Rail, a perfect match for this lifelong rail enthusiast. Moving as a press officer from the Scottish to the Eastern Region of BR, he later became Head of Press Desk at the headquarters of the British Railways Board in London before returning to journalism with The Scotsman in 1979.

Allan McLean had a lifelong passion for travel by train

He was delighted when in 1998 his career turned full circle and he went to Virgin Trains as public affairs manager for Scotland and the north of England.

He reported at first hand on many key moments in modern railway history, which included covering the inaugural run of the Advanced Passenger Train in 1981, observing that this infamous occasion saw – contrary to later belief – only one of the journalists be sick. That was Norman Leith of the London Evening Standard, who had enjoyed BR's hospitality the previous night a little too much! Allan also covered the opening of the Eurotunnel, and was on the celebrated 3hr 29-minute run behind a new electric locomotive from King's Cross to Waverley in September 1991.

When Allan called them from The Scotsman, railway press officers often found that he told them more than they told him, and senior managers sought him out when they had stories to break. At the end of his shift on the paper, he would pop down to Waverley in order to see the Sleeper trains off.

Allan played a key role in saving Scotland-London Sleepers in the mid-1990s when they faced withdrawal – he got wind of BR's intentions and broke an exclusive in The Scotsman which led to him setting up the paper's “Save our Sleepers” campaign, which ultimately saw them saved and modernised with new rolling-stock.

At the Press Fund lunch in 1998 the speaker Richard Branson was hesitant, rumours having suggested that his Glaswegian wife might prompt sympathy from him for the SNP. A future MSP of that party, Dorothy-Grace Elder, filled the pause by shouting, “Do something for Scotland, Richard, do the Waverley Line”. Branson turned uncomprehendingly to his team for advice, and Allan whispered “do it”.

The result was funding for the feasibility study which gave us the Borders Railway, ten years old this September, and railway historian David Spaven recalls: "The involvement of Virgin Trains may have raised a few eyebrows, but its then Public Affairs Manager for Scotland, Allan McLean, provides a simple explanation: ‘Let's admit that my personal enthusiasm had something to do with it, but from a company perspective there was the prospect of running long-distance tilting trains through the Borders if the case for re-opening the entire route stacked up’."

Joining Virgin Trains enabled Allan to deliver on this hope that there would be tilting trains on the West Coast Main Line, and the annual visits for the railway press to Scotland he organised between 1999 and 2014 became legendary for their hospitality and informativeness.

Allan also wrote about beer for The Scotsman and was the first winner of the British Guild of Beer Writers Gold Tankard for best beer writing. This was in 1988 and he went on to win it three times, the first person to do so. His beer and rail interests often collided; for example, he persuaded Cameron's brewery of Hartlepool to brew a commemorative “George Stephenson Special 1825-1975” ale for the Rail 150 events in 1975. It’s a great sadness that he has died in the year of Railway 200, the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, as he played a big part in Rail 150 while with BR Eastern Region.

Aside from transport and beer, Allan covered many of the major stories of the time for The Scotsman, including Lockerbie and the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster. His time in Sheffield covering that story affected him deeply.

He also wrote and contributed to a variety of books on railways, beer and Mary, Queen of Scots, 16th-century history being another keen interest of his.

In retirement Allan returned to the cause of the Waverley Line, stepping in as chair of the Campaign for Borders Rail during 2015-17 and acting as its Parliamentary Liaison Officer. He was appointed a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and became renowned for his ability to deliver entertaining lectures without recourse to visual aids or notes – he had previously delighted the Saltire Society by an account of Scottish railway history in which he gave equal length to each of the four centuries of their development thus far, by starting his tale in 1722 with the Tranent-Cockenzie Waggonway, which was fought over at the Battle of Prestonpans. With his friend Dennis Lovett he co-wrote a volume in the Middleton Press series on Scottish Main Lines about the railway from Edinburgh to Inverkeithing.

Allan is survived by his wife Lynda and their three children and families. His daughter Helen is a school teacher in New Zealand, his son Roger – who also, for a time, worked on the railway – lives in Australia and his other son Andrew has followed in his dad’s footsteps by becoming Assistant Director and Head Curator of the National Railway Museum in York.

Obituaries

If you would like to submit an obituary (800-1000 words preferred, with jpeg image), contact [email protected]