Struan Robertson

Died: February 3, 2015.

Dr Struan Robertson, who has died aged 94, was a pioneering Glasgow doctor and a strong supporter of the city's museum of transport. In his youth, the notion of such a museum was almost laughable, but Dr Robertson was greatly concerned that something should be preserved of Glasgow's then still-great tramway system.

Struan Robertson was born in Lanarkshire at Hartwood Asylum where his father was depute chief medical officer. While it was always expected that he would enter medicine, a lifelong love was steam engines, and as a small boy, he got to know the Hartwood Pug, the diminutive locomotive that worked the tiny branch connecting the hospital to the main line.

It was his city-centre education at the High School of Glasgow which introduced him to trams, after which he was rarely without a notebook and camera, recording trams and the routes they served. He graduated in medicine from Glasgow University, and almost immediately was commissioned.

His war service included the Royal Naval Air Station of HMS Sanderling (now Glasgow Airport) as well as being stationed at the RNAS Easthaven, by Arbroath, as junior medical officer. In the wardroom one evening, he informally lectured his fellow officers by extolling the virtues of the Glasgow tramcar. This proved too much for station transport officer Charles Hall, who used his knowledge of Sheffield trams to challenge some of Struan's Glasgow facts. Thus began a friendship between two tram lovers which ended only in 2009 with the death of Mr Hall at 96.

After the war, Dr Robertson returned to his adopted Glasgow where he joined a group practice, working through to senior partner. His organisational and managerial skills proved valuable in the setting up and commissioning of Woodside Health Centre, thought to be the first of its kind in Scotland.

His interest in tramways grew, and his photographic competence was matched by the copious notes taken of everything he observed. When plans for Glasgow's museum of transport were announced, he made contact with incoming keeper Tony Browning, and they proved a formidable pair in collecting, cataloguing and photographing items for preservation, from tickets to complete tramcars, for the substantial transport collection based from 1964 in the former Coplawhill Car works in Albert Drive (and now at Riverside Museum). While the car works were still in operation, Dr Robertson could often be seen there with camera and tripod, creating a record of everything that made a tram work, from controllers to brakes.

Struan John Tannahill Robertson (in formal letters, he would sign himself "Struan Jno. T Robertson") bore a family link to Robert Tannahill, the Paisley poet, and unsurprisingly, books played a major part in his life. A stalwart of the Scottish Book Trust, his interests ranged from archaeology, geology and genealogy, to engineering, hypnotherapy, and of course his beloved trams.

When he left Glasgow for retirement in Dornoch in 1983, he missed his tram contacts in Glasgow so much that he embarked on a doctoral thesis on the municipalisation of the city's horse tramways - a move which enabled him to continue regular visits to Clydeside.

But his thesis was never finished - not because he gave up, but because his supervising professor retired and a successor showed little interest. Never one to waste knowledge and learning, Dr Robertson turned his researched into the definitive history of days of horse trams with The Glasgow Horse Tramways, a substantial work published by the Scottish Tramway and Transport Society (STTS) in 2001.

When well into his eighties, he penned a major dissertation on a specialised aspect of tram engineering, the complicated story of regenerative braking, also published by the STTS. This form of braking was unsuccessfully tried on Glasgow trams in the 1930s and 1940s. Through modern electronics, it is now adopted as green technology.

His lifetime notes on tramways he unselfishly handed over to author Ian Stewart, and these provided a nucleus for what became The Glasgow Tramcar, an outstandingly successful publication by the STTS. Unsurprisingly, Dr Robertson was made an honorary life member of the society.

Away from trams, Dr Robertson's retirement interests included lecturing to a new generation of clinicians on hypnotherapy, serving as clerk to the congregational board of Dornoch Cathedral (where his great friend was the Very Rev James Simpson); and tracing his family tree to such an extent that he found descent not only from poet Robert Tannahill, but that his distant cousin was actor Rex Harrison.

In 2009 Dr Robertson and Dr Graham Park co-authored a Sutherland book, Abandoned Buildings of the Evelix Valley, drawn somewhat from an exhibition that Dr Robertson had curated two decades before with the late Jimmy Bell, founder of Dornoch Heritage Society. The text of the book is supported by drawings by Dr Robertson of sites, hut circles and buildings, panoramic views, sketches, maps and colour photographs.

He never lacked energy, and his voice maintained a youthful timbre right to the end. His wife Rhoda, a nurse whom he met while both worked at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, predeceased him nine years ago, and he is survived by four children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

GORDON CASELY