Train Tours in Scotland

Before you get tied up with where to go, a couple things to keep in mind.

Edinburgh

• Jan 15 sunrise 8:34 am sunset 4:11 pm
• Mar 15 sunrise 6:28 am sunset 6:16 pm

You can plan a wonderful trip around Scotland without a car. Trains, buses and maybe a day tour here and there. You may even want to add a small group tour for a few days to get to more remote areas not served well by buses and trains.

What are your interests? Scottish history and culture, whisky, castles and ruins, family heritage, hiking, neolithic sights, Harry Potter??

But first, decide when you will be traveling. A lot of sights outside of cities have limited or no hours in January.

Scotland's rail network is good. It's bus system is extensive.

Scotrail is the main trainline. Stagecoach, Citylink and Ember are the larger bus/coach lines.

Consider basing in a few places and taking one or multi-day tours with companies such as Rabbies or Timberbush

I've taken numerous tours with Rabbies including three in the past 10 days. All were good. I've never traveled with Timberbush but have heard good things.

I would also suggest March over January.

It comes at a very substantial price, but there is an Orient Express style train which tours Scotland- the Royal Scotsman.

I don't think they run in winter due partly to a lack of demand, and partly due to the possibility of weather disruptions.

Scotrail do a range of Rover Tickets- https://www.scotrail.co.uk/tickets/combined-tickets-travel-passes

Yes you can possibly do it a bit cheaper by buying Advance cheap tickets for specific timed trains, but in terms of pure flexibility and ease of use (especially in the winter and early spring months) the pass has a real value to it.

Scottish Citylink also do a rover ticket- the explorer pass-https://www.citylink.co.uk/travelling-with-citylink/tickets/explorer-pass/

That is very good value.

There is a very good Scotland based company called Strathmore Hotels who have several nice hotels around the country- https://strathmorehotels.com/
I've been to all their hotels, all multiple times, and all by public transport.
One of the interesting things you can do with them is to book what they call a Holiday Hop- a multi centred trip- https://strathmorehotels.com/holiday-hops/

They also have a travel arm- Strathmore Travel which does multi day trips and day trips around the country. Yes, they are big buses-https://www.strathmoretravel.com/desktopdefault.aspx

If I wanted someone to put together that kind of bespoke rail based holiday my first choice would be Ffestiniog Travel- https://www.ffestiniogtravel.com/scotland/scottish-circular-rail-holiday

They are better known for doing worldwide trips, but also do UK holidays. They have a considerable number of hotels they have used on their escorted tours, so know personally. I've used them widely in Europe, the US and Australia and have always had very good hotels and generally excellent service. I have no reason to think they won't deal with people from outside the UK.
As you can see they will even organise car rental for hard to do sectors if needed.

Check out McKinlay Kidd. They have group tours, self-guided tours by car or train, and they will create a custom itinerary for you, booking all your hotels, transportation, and experiences such as guided day tours. I have used them for three different self-guided tours. For two of them I started with two of their standard self-guided tours and tweaked them and took them back to back. They are easy to work with and the cost is reasonable. They use small hotels and B&Bs full of character. Even if you choose not to use them, you might get some ideas from their itineraries.