I enjoyed my last train trip rather a lot. In fact, it left me with a craving to do a bit more train travel. Unfortunately it is a bit expensive, even with a young person’s railcard, to do every week. So, I left it as long as I could before the travel bug bit once more. I’d done the Kyle line, based on Seat 2A’s report, but there were three more Scottish rural lines I had left to do.

There’s the Far North Line from Inverness up to Thurso and Wick, the Inverness to Aberdeen line, and the West Highland Line(s) from Glasgow up to Oban, Fort William and Mallaig. I refer you, once more, to Wikipedia’s Scottish Rail Map. I did a bit of research into the various options, and decided that this time I would take the line up to Mallaig. Journey times looked a little something like this:

Itinerary:
0703 - 0820, Perth to Glasgow Queen Street
0907 - 1409, Glasgow Queen Street to Mallaig
1605 - 2130, Mallaig to Glasgow Queen Street
2141 - 2235, Glasgow Queen Street to Perth

View the journey on Google Maps

I will say, as I did last time, that the photos that accompany this report are mostly not good enough to go on my Flickr page, as they often contain reflections in the train’s windows, but do give a good enough representation of taking this train journey.

There aren’t many advantages to catching a train at 7AM, but seeing the Earn valley in the light of sunrise with the mist just rising off of the river is one of them. Rather pretty.

I’ve probably taken the route between Perth and Glasgow several hundred times, yet this is the first time I’d noticed this rather shocked looking building at Gleneagles station. He even has raised eyebrows!

I’d planned on catching the 0703 service, instead of the slightly later 0715 service, to Queen Street because it would give me just under an hour in Glasgow to buy some breakfast and lunch for the journey, because once I sat down on the train to Mallaig I wouldn’t have an option to pay anything less than train prices for five whole hours (and two minutes). Unfortunately, due to signal problems, instead of my 50 minutes, I was reduced to less than 30. I changed my plans from popping out to Baguette Express and having a couple of baguettes made up for me, to popping into the station’s Boots for a meal deal, and also getting a bacon butty from Burger King. Om nom nom.

Scotrail use Class 156 Super Sprinters on the West Highland Line, which is slightly disappointing. These are Scotrail’s oldest diesel units, and not the most comfortable for a five hour journey. Especially when you consider there’s just one toilet for the two cars. Thankfully Scotrail had put two sprinters together for my run, and the load was fairly light. I got a table to myself for the entire journey in both directions. I was also lucky enough to get a seat on the Port side of the train (for best views, I would recommend POSH seating arrangements. That’s Port Out, Starboard Home).

Racing along the Clyde estuary, we must’ve disturbed some birds.

Loch Goil, meet Loch Long.

Past Loch Lomond, entering the Highlands proper.

Ah, the desolate beauty of Rannoch Moor.

Loch Treig took me by surprise. It was beautiful, came out of nowhere, and my camera’s battery died just as I got to an excellent viewpoint for its southern end. Thank goodness I carry a spare.

The train had paused at Crianlarich to swap crews, and it did the same thing at Fort William. Worse, at Fort William the train reverses out to head out towards Mallaig, meaning my Portside seat was now on the Starboard side of the train. Still beautiful, but less photo-opportunistic.

Neptune’s Staircase. Last time I was here, I had cycled there from Inverness. Last time I’d crossed the Caledonian Canal though, was a few weeks prior while taking the Kyle Line.

One of the curious features of the far north-west of Scotland is there are remarkably few trees, except for islands and along railway lines. This is because deer cannot get to the islands, and railway lines in Britain are entirely fenced, and they eat any saplings they come across.

I’d never been to Mallaig before, so didn’t really know what to expect. Undiscovered Scotland had sung its praises, which to be fair is what Undiscovered Scotland do for nearly everything they write about. It basically only exists as a place for people to wait, either to get on a boat, or to get on a train. I mean, obviously it’s a working port as well, with a number of fishing boats kept there.

Mallaig is only 20 miles south of Kyle of Lochalsh, but if you wanted to take a train there, it would be a 470 mile journey. Even if you wanted to drive there without taking a ferry, it would be a 113 mile trip. Slartibartfast himself would love the coastline of Scotland.

I think two hours was pretty much the wrong amount of time to spend in Mallaig. It was too short to do anything really interesting, like take a walk into the hills, or take a ferry to one of the islands, but too long to just buy a sandwich from the co-op and take the train home. If you were a bit richer than me, there are a number of fancy looking restaurants and tea-rooms to choose from. I spent about an hour wandering all three of Mallaig’s streets before giving into temptation and buying a bag of chips from the chip shop in the station. Here’s Murray’s Mallaig travel tip, don’t buy chips from the chip shop in the station. They’re terrible.

I believe this boat is the ferry to Knoydart, home of Britain’s remotest pub.

Eigg. One of the few islands I can instantly recognise, thanks to its distinctive quiff

Eventually my time in Mallaig ran out, and we all crowded once more onto the train. One of the problems with the 156 rolling stock is that it doesn’t have any air conditioning, though it does have heating. Why they’d have left that heating on for the last two hours, with all the windows closed, on a hot day is beyond me. But they had. Thankfully with all the windows open, the train cooled down rather nicely as we got underway.

The train stopped on the Glenfinnan viaduct on the way north so the conductor could say in the most unenthusiastic voice in the world “We are now on the Glenfinnan viaduct, which the kiddies will recognise from the Harry Potter films”.

One of my crowning achievements was climbing two thirds of Ben Nevis once. Me? A quitter? Yeah.

That’s it for the photographs. It was a long day. I left the house at 6.30 in the morning, and didn’t get home again until 11pm. It’s not that much longer than I spent doing the Kyle line, but it did feel it, since there was so much more travelling time, and so much less actually being there. But there’s a reason that the West Highland Line is regularly voted as one of the world’s most scenic railway lines, and that’s because it’s beautiful. It’s hard to capture that beauty in photographs, because of the number of trees on the line that seem designed to ruin your picture. I hope that some of the pictures here give you an idea of what the line is like, and I hope it inspires you to take the time to travel it.