The Highland Line

Running north from Perth to Inverness, the Highland railway had difficult territory to negotiate. Much of the route was built as single track with passing loops to control the cost. The gradients on the line were such that the Highland Railway was the first railway in Britain to introduce 4-6-0 locomotives, for freight work in this instance. To this day the line remains largely single track and the issues of time keeping have been carried forward from the Victorian era. It is one of the most scenic routes on Britain’s railways, probably only bested by the West Highland Line and the Settle and Carlisle routes. On our recent holiday I had the chance to visit three stations along the route and take photos. In the second week we had typically mixed weather.

These shots were taken at Blair Atholl. A typical Highland Railway signal box – still in active service…… The ‘Bobbie’ has responsibility to close those gates when a train is approaching even when the train is stopping in the station like this southbound freight…… in case it overruns. For the people spotters – that’s my Son hiding in his hoody under the awning 😉 The freight had to stop here for the northbound Inverness service that was running a few minutes late. It gave us time to have a quick friendly chat with the freight driver and wish him a safe trip south 🙂 Here’s the late running passenger…

This was a day when Epi had dragged us out shopping at House of Bruar which is very close to Blair Atholl. From there we then drove south to Pitlochry. Here we found 43127 and 43021 once again doing driver training before the introduction of ex-GWR HST’s to ScotRail services…… and this rather ornate waiting room on the northbound platform…

In the previous week with better weather we visited Dunkeld – you’ve seen some truck shots from there 😉 Dunkeld and Birnam station produced a couple of nice shots the first of which was a bonus late running Inverness service……with no one expecting it, including me, the driver wisely gave a blast of the horn 🙂

Dunkeld & Birnam station is, like others on the line, a robust but good looking building…

I waited a short time for the southbound passenger train at Dunkeld – running to time despite the late running northbound service – and got this shot……with King’s Seat beside the River Tay as a backdrop 🙂