IT all began on May 31, 1923 at Maryborough Hospital: the birth of Portland’s Arthur Neve.

Mr Neve’s family lived near Maryborough, in the small town of Talbot, where he had an older sister and eventually a younger brother.

Two years after his birth, the family moved to nearby Amherst where his grandfather owned a hotel called the Horse and Jockey and where gold mines were prospering.

Mr Neve lived there until he finished his schooling at 15 years old and started his working career.

Aged just 15, he moved to the “big smoke” Melbourne with the help of his mother who assisted him while he was seeking board and settling in.

He began an apprenticeship at the Newport Railway Workshops where he discovered a passion for trains.

After the first two years of his apprenticeship, Mr Neve would make a habit of looking out the window to watch as train drivers would speed past.

“I thought, I’d like to do that,” Mr Neve said.

“I transferred over into that, and I started as an engine cleaner, and you work your way up.

Mr Neve studied and completed did a two-day oral examination which led to him becoming a train driver.

“The examiner got off the engine, he walked around, and I thought to myself, ‘what is he going to say?’ And he came up to me and he said, ‘congratulations Arthur, you are now a driver on the Victorian railways’.”

As a young train driver, he was transferred frequently across parts of Victoria.

“Six weeks here, two weeks somewhere else, I was all over the place, which is quite good when you’re young.”

However, when Mr Neve was either 18 or 19 years old he had considered a career on the police force, which he could not pursue because there was an age requirement of 21 and height requirement of above 5 feet and nine inches, he said.

His chosen career path as a train driver led to the shaping of his future, for if it wasn’t for his travels, he wouldn’t have met the love of his life.

One day in Maryborough he was called into office where he was told to go up to Donald for three days and he asked, “where’s Donald?”

“Well, I finish up there after 23 years, because I met somebody up there,” Mr Neve said.

While walking down the street in Donald with a friend, Mr Neve me a young woman who was working at a local shop.

He and Lorna courted for two years before they married in 1945 on August 12.

They proceeded to have two sons, Colin in 1947 and John in 1949, who together gave them five grandchildren, resulting in nine great grandchildren and now two great, great grandchildren aged four and one.

In 1964 Mr Neve chose to move his family to Portland, after having the choice to move either to Portland or Hamilton for his work.

He considered Portland to have more employment opportunities for his boys and to top it off, Portland had its beaches, he said.

Unfortunately, his train driving career was cut short in 1968 due to bad eyesight, but he continued his love of rail by taking up the  hobby of making model trains, putting together a display that would take up most his garage.

Another interest for Mr Neve, besides the topic of trains, is playing the bagpipes. It is an interest that has seen him play in many times in Australia and even overseas.

He was 10 years old when he started learning to play the bagpipes and was gifted his first set of pipes when he was 12, sparking great opportunities for the future.

“Those pipes were given to me by my mother’s great uncle, and he said, ‘when Arthur can play a tune he can have these pipes,’ and well I played a tune,” he recalled.

“I got the pipe band going up in Donald …we had a big day at Maryborough New Year’s Day and I went over to Scotland to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

“I came to Portland and joined the Portland band.”

Mr Neve now resides in Bupa Portland and will celebrate his 100th birthday on Wednesday with his close family.