WHEN I was nobbut a lad, I was pretty law-abiding. Apart from scrumping the odd apple, my greatest illegal adventure was to "cab" the Mallard, the fastest steam locomotive ever built.

Like many youngsters in the age of steam, I collected engine numbers. But our group went one step further: we would sneak into railways sidings and climb onto the footplate of great engines to "cab" them.

And there was no greater prize to cab than the great A4 "streak", the Mallard, which set and still holds the world record for steam at 126mph.

In those days, engine drivers to us were gods, even though they would chase us out of sidings where we trespassed in our hunt.

Now, almost 50 years later, I have met the god of gods - Zeus himself - the man who drove the Mallard from its museum home in York on one of its last ever trips. On the Settle-Carlisle, of course.

And David Parrinder, 64, turned out to be quite un-godlike, one of the most self-effacing and pleasant guys you could ever come across.

David, who lives with his wife, Nancy, in a neat semi overlooking the railway sidings in Marina Crescent, Skipton, is not the subject of this feature just because he drove Mallard. And the Flying Scotsman. And the Sir Nigel Gresley, named after the brilliant engineer who designed these engines, the ultimate pinnacle of steam power before dreary diesel took over.

No. I went to see him because of his remarkable record as a working man who has just retired after 50 years on the railways, every day of it spent working out of Skipton.

"I don't suppose many people will ever work for 50 years again," he says. "I started at 14, cleaning engines and scraping out their fire boxes, a real mucky job.

"But I never thought anything of it. It was just work: work I was proud of, I admit, but millions of men in Britain were also doing hard, mucky work so I was no different from anyone else."

He started on, of all days, New Year's Eve, 1951 - "New Year wasn't a public holiday then" - cycling 15 miles from his home near Haworth to Skipton Station: "It wasn't bad coming - its downhill all the way - but going back after a shift that sometimes lasted 10 hours was a bit tough."

Without casting too many aspersions, I wonder what modern teenagers would think of a working day like that. I doubt, too, whether many of them would enjoy the rigid system of training that every railwayman had to pass before he could be promoted.

David actually had to qualify as a cleaner! Then, as a cleaner he was able to stand in as a relief fireman, heaving tons of coal into a roaring furnace as engines laboured up the steep gradients of the Settle-Carlisle.

"On those open footplates, winter could be quite hard," he recalls. "My side of the footplate was hot, the driver's cold. But if an east wind was blowing over the fells and we were going north, even I would be freezing.

"I once spent seven hours marooned in a snow drift in Garsdale before they could get to us and tow us out."

He was well into his 20s when he became a fireman which meant he could stand in as a relief driver. He didn't make driver until he was nearly 30! And that was the peak of his ambition.

By this time, the railways were being changed forever.

He became a diesel engine driver, sitting in comparative luxury in an enclosed cabin - "it was much more comfortable but not quite the same" - but was, before long, one of the last surviving members of the railway community qualified to handle the great steam locos.

For a while, that didn't mean much. Then the old British Rail suddenly found there was money to be made from the huge backswell of yearning for the great days of steam.

They began running steam excursions for railways buffs and, as the most scenic line in England, the Settle-Carlisle was a favourite route. And there, in Skipton, was David Parrinder, one of the few men still in service capable of handling hugely powerful steam locos.

That's when he got to drive the Mallard, the Flying Scotsman and many, many more with names to make the rail buffs drool. These were not just working locos but incredibly valuable antiques, living fossils from the great age of British engineering.

Like thoroughbred racehorses they had to be handled with skill (and, I suspect, in David's case, love) and most of them are now permanent museum pieces.

Whether we will see them under full steam again, I don't know.

But I doubt very much whether we shall ever see again the likes of David Parrinder, who plans to spend his retirement with wife Nancy touring Britain - in their caravan.

Happy retirement, David and Nancy. Nice to know that gods turn out to be nice guys when you finally meet.