Here's a delightful article from Wednesday's Herald:
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24894881.one-great-rail-trips-life-sucked
Makes me want to grab a sandwich and a drink, and hop on this train! Even in January! Love paragraphs four and five!
Mike (Auchterless)
Article is paywalled via your link. Since you have seen it, can you provide access? If not, can you paste the text?
The UK is full of great train rides, and the vloggers who love them
Scottish rail trip is one of world's best but is it being ruined?
29th January
By Kevin McKenna
@kmckenna63
Kevin McKenna at Corrour, a stop on the Scotrail West Highland service (Image: Gordon Terris)
Kevin McKenna at Corrour, a stop on the Scotrail West Highland service (Image: Gordon Terris)
On Rannoch Moor at Corrour station on the West Highland Line by the wooden bridge where Renton considered aloud what it means to be Scottish to Sick Boy, Spud and Tommy, his jaggy Trainspotting chinas, a young couple are choreographing a reconstruction of the scene.
Charlotte and Patrick have come here from Dundee to take selfies on the bridge but when they see me and The Herald photographer, Gordon Terris loitering on the station platform they requisition us to be props in their picture. And so, somewhere out there in the land of Facebook and TikTok there’s a photograph of me trying to look windswept and interesting and Gordon sitting on the bridge.
We couldn’t really have refused their request, we who routinely interrupt others to solicit their opinions and arrange them for our pictures. And they duly return the favour for Mr Terris.
“Isn’t it just wonderful having somewhere as beautiful right on your doorstep,” says Charlotte. And not just here. More than once on the train journey which brought us to this place you make a pledge to Scotland: that never again will you forsake her for another country’s oily charms and empty promises.
Around every bend on this two and a half hour trip another piece of Scotland reveals itself and you make another vow: that in future you will take the train when next you must journey to the West Highlands. The big A82 road which bears you through the Trossachs and Glen Coe also casts many spells but to see Loch Lomond from this vantage point and the lochans which garland these hills is on a different level.
Kevin McKenna boards the 8.22am ScotRail Queen Street West Highland service
Kevin McKenna boards the 8.22am ScotRail Queen Street West Highland service (Image: Gordon Terris)
I mean, let’s take a closer at the Rannoch Moor. Why have you never visited this place before? When you live and have your being in Glasgow whose beautiful, built heritage is currently being so neglected by the city’s panjandrums an afternoon spent amidst the bleak splendour of Rannoch Moor, rolling across to Loch Ossian is one of Scotland’s natural therapeutic remedies. And when you see the forests that swaddle this railway line as it climbs through Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park you ache to walk these paths that the passing of millenniums hasn’t changed.
Even in the height of winter the colours are intense and the trees, yet to sprout their summer foliage, aren’t concealing the landscape beyond them. Today, a watery winter sun is trying to break through, but in these places you want January to keep behaving like January and not be getting daft ideas above its designated place in the year. Here is where low clouds skirt the top of the moor and gather around the hills and glens, so that you forget that Corrour is the highest station above sea level in the entire UK rail network.
There's a thrilling moment when you see the train pulling away from the platform when the carriages tilt through a full 90 degree bend to be swallowed by the folds of the moor and the hills beyond. In an hour’s time its sister train will emerge suddenly from the mists, like Omar Sharif arriving to claim his family’s desert well in Lawrence of Arabia.
Kevin McKenna on route to Corrour on the West Highland line
Kevin McKenna en route to Corrour on the West Highland line (Image: Gordon Terris)
Later, it will sweep through Fort William and over the Glenfinnan Viaduct before reaching Mallaig, its final destination. This truly is Hamish MacCunn’s Land of the Mountain and the Flood.
Here’s the thing though, and it needs to be said because some of the other passengers on this 8.22am service out of Glasgow Queen Street are also saying it.
The West Highland Line is the brightest jewel in Scotland’s transport network and is widely considered to be one of the world’s great train journeys. This line is regularly rated among the most beautiful on the planet by international travellers. A few years ago it topped a survey of readers of Wanderlust magazine who placed it ahead of the Trans-Siberian Express.
Read more:
Exclusive: Anti-social behaviour at train stations rise to almost 1,000
ScotRail boss apologises to stranded disabled passengers
'ScotRail staff safety sacrificed by reducing ticket office hours'
Scotland's trains: On the right track? – Find all articles here
Yet, you’re left with the distinct impression that ScotRail wants to suck all the joy out of this journey and we can talk about its absurd blanket ban on alcohol on all of its train services another time. There is absolutely no hospitality on this train, not even a basic trolley service. It’s as though the rail operators have deployed a “you’ll have had your joy” attitude; that the majesty of the landscape spares them the need actually to enhance the tourists’ experience of Scotland.
On the 8.22 we meet seven men from Kilmarnock who call themselves the Killie Ramblers. Tom, Hugh John, Tony, Andy, Duncan and Drew have a combined age of 449. They are a mix of retired and semi-retired engineers and project managers who have worked across most of Scotland’s skilled industrial management sectors: oil, military, pharmaceutical, whisky, aviation and construction. They’ve showcased their skills in most of the five continents and all express pride that few places they’ve ever visited have anything that can match the majesty of the West Highland Line.
The 'Killie Ramblers' on their journey north
The 'Killie Ramblers' on their journey north (Image: Gordon Terris)
“By the time we reach Mallaig we’ll have been travelling for nearly six hours,” says Tom. “It’s scarcely believable that there are no refreshments on the entire journey. Do they actually want people to travel on it?”
They’ve travelled on this line before – last year with their wives – but this is a boys’ weekend where you suspect not very much rambling is being planned. Decorum and discretion forbids me from enquiring what’s in their cans and bottles but their patter is making this journey go more quickly.
“The treasures you see on this train alone make the journey worthwhile,” says Andy. Nor can you say that the absence of drinks (hot or cold) or any other fare on this journey is because we’re well out of the traditional holiday season. You’re as likely to get storms and rain in July as January and besides, Scotland –owing to the grandeur on this line and beyond is an all-year-round visitor experience.
Charlotte Palmer and Patrick Smith a famous photo stop
Charlotte Palmer and Patrick Smith at famous photo stop (Image: Gordon Terris)
Me and Gordon are invited to join the boys for a chat and they kindly offer to share their home-made comestibles. They’re swapping tales of getting scalped in the Highlands for food and drink.
“In Boat of Garten, they were asking 13 quid for a bowl of soup and a slice of bread.”
“It was a more than ten quid for one beer and a sandwich in Oban.”
I feel a Highland version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch coming on. “Luxury. It were 25 quid for a piece of dry toast and a pickle.”
It’s as though someone high up in Scotland’s tourist sector has said: “Well the scenery is free so why are you complaining?”
Read more in the series:
My day inspecting the cleanliness of Scotland's trains
ScotRail 'doesn't provide value for money' for passengers
Donald Turvill: I took ScotRail's Edinburgh to Glasgow express: was it worth it?
Not for the first time you wonder if all the hard work put in by the lochs and hills and the glens to attract people here is then undone by the prices and the hospitality.
I’m looking at the menu for the restaurant at the former Corrour station house. Seventeen quid for fish and chips seems steep, but it’s not really that much more for the same in Glasgow city centre. And yes, perhaps the scenery does demand a modest premium.
We meet Marta, from Zaragoza in northern Spain currently completing her PhD studies in archaeology at Edinburgh University. She’s staying a few nights at the Loch Ossian youth hostel, a 20-minute walk across the moor from the station.
“Scotland is just so beautiful,” she says, “and whenever possible I love to go walking in the Cairngorms. I just discovered this railway line recently and when I saw the little signal-house at Corrour on a recent journey I wanted to visit it again and stay in the youth hostel for a while. You must be very proud to have so much of this in Scotland.”
The solitary man: Kevin McKenna's Trainspotting moment
The solitary man: Kevin McKenna's Trainspotting moment (Image: Gordon Terris)
Doing their very best to make up for Scotrail’s somewhat Spartan approach to on-train comfort are the train staff, Neilian, Dom and Linda who fall to winding up the Killie boys and providing a grassroots oral commentary along the route. Neilian was a schoolteacher who lives on Mallaig and now works this line down to Rannoch. Now she’s providing the Killie boys with her expert reviews of Mallaig’s best eateries.
“I consider myself to have the best job in the world and I couldn’t be happier in my work,” she says. “You might think you’d grow blasé about the scenery when you’re travelling this line every day, but believe me, it never fails to work its magic.”
As the 8.22 leaves Ardlui down near Loch Lomond, you begin to notice the houses that appear out of the mists. Every time you see one you feel a little shard of jealousy.
Barely two hours ago, I’d inched towards Glasgow city centre nose-to-tail on a six-lane highway. How quickly the chrome and concrete cityscape gives way to this. And as we disembark at Corrour, Neilian the ticket lady produces a couple of cans of juice for us, free of charge, bless her.
Sorry, all,
Looks as though the article is behind a paywall, for all of those who don't sudscribe to the Herald. I've posted it in its entirety, minus the photos. The Herald has a promo going - one pound for three months.
Mike (Auchterless)
