Great British Railway Journeys

by Charlie Bunce

  Tom Morris was instrumental in laying out the course at Prestwick and struck the first ball of the first open in 1860.

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  Players and spectators used the train for easy access to Ayrshire’s golf courses. Indeed, by 1925 there were so many people watching the Open Championship at Prestwick that the players had difficulty seeing the fairway. It was never held there again, but by this time golf in general and Scottish courses in particular were firmly established.

  The line follows the coast for a while before turning inland towards Glasgow. At Paisley we encountered another Scottish tradition – tartan. In Bradshaw’s day Paisley was ‘a thriving seat of the cotton trade’, famous not only for its distinctive fabric design but also for producing thread. In its heyday there were 800 looms weaving tartan in nearby Kilbarchen. But at Paisley we learnt that, with tartan, not everything is as it seems.

  After the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the wearing of tartan was outlawed. When the ban was finally lifted 36 years later, tartan gradually became the thing to wear. Its high point came in 1822 when King George IV visited Edinburgh wearing full tartan Highland dress. A Highland ball was held where Highland dress was compulsory.

  Now everyone wanted their own tartan, and in 1842 two brothers claiming to be the grandsons of Bonnie Prince Charlie published a book called Vestiarium Scoticum, allegedly drawn from ancient manuscripts, listing lost tartans and their clans.

  Thanks to the book, sold at 10 guineas, everyone could track down any relevant tartan. It even contained tartans linked to the lowlands, where none had previously been known. The weavers who benefited from this could not have been happier.

  The authority of the book was barely questioned. The fact that tartans had traditionally been linked to clan districts rather than families seems to have been overlooked. And it wasn’t until 140 years later that investigations proved the book was a fake.

  Even if the fiction had been detected, the truth would probably not have stopped the public love affair with tartan, especially after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had their new and favourite home, Balmoral, decked in it in 1855.

  After arriving in Glasgow, finally it’s time to join the West Highland line on one of the world’s most beautiful train journeys. Early on the line runs alongside the River Clyde, which was once the home of a thriving shipbuilding industry. Among the ships forged in this stretch is Cutty Sark, now berthed in London and the only surviving example of a tea clipper.

  Cutty Sark was launched at Dumbarton in 1869, one of a new type of sailing ship with its iron frame and timber hull and masts that stretched 150 feet into the sky. With this combination she could exceed the speed of rival steamships. She was named after the young witch in Robert Burns’s poem ‘Tam o’Shanter’.

  Builders Scott and Linton were bankrupted by the construction of Cutty Sark. She was completed by Denny’s of Dumbarton, who later went on to build the world’s first passenger turbine steamer and first hovercraft.

  Other notable ships – among thousands built on the Clyde – include the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Hood, sunk in 1941with the loss of 1,415 lives, the liners Queen Mary and Lusitania, and the Royal Yacht Britannia. It’s an area that was once known as Red Clydeside for the colour of the prevailing politics. In the General Election of 1922 several hardline socialists from Clydeside were elected to Parliament.

  Leaving industrial Scotland behind, the line heads north-west along the Firth of Clyde and through Helensburgh. Bending to the north, it runs alongside Gare Loch and Loch Long before reaching Tarbet station, where the glorious Loch Lomond comes into view.

  In 1263 Tarbet witnessed an extraordinary feat. When King Haakon of Norway sent his invasion fleet to attack Scotland, several ships came up Loch Long. At the end of the loch the Norse crews proceeded to drag them out of the water and across the neck of land between Arrochar and Tarbet, before launching them into Loch Lomond and sailing on into central Scotland. King Haakon was later defeated at Largs on the Ayrshire coast.

  This part of Scotland has become a popular tourist destination and another example of Victorian tourism driven by popular poems and novels.

  It was Walter Scott (1771–1832), author of the ‘Waverley’ novels and generally regarded as the father of the historical romance, who put this area on the visitor map. His poem ‘Lady of the Lake’, set in nearby Loch Katrine, was published in 1810 and sold 25,000 copies in eight months. The novel Rob Roy, about a folk hero who roamed the nearby Trossachs, appeared seven years later and sold 10,000 copies.

  The first to visit had to do so by coach. But when the railway arrived it disgorged many more people hungry to find out about the backdrop of Scott’s masterpieces. A steamer trip completed their exploration of the literary landscape. Although his ponderous writing style later went out of fashion, Scott did much to bring the Highlands into vogue.

  Ship building on the Clyde was a way of life for generations in Glasgow.

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  Like vast areas of Scotland, this area was once covered by the Caledonian forest. Only a tiny percentage of the native woodland is left now, and railways played a part in its demise. At the village of Crianlarich, for example, where Glen Falloch meets Strath Fillan and Glen Dochart, the forest was stripped to supply railway sleepers. It suffered again with the advent of the First World War when timber was urgently needed to shore up the trenches of the Western Front. Meanwhile, on top of these sudden needs, wood was in perpetual demand for building and fuel.

  A passion for the Trossachs was inspired among trippers by the works of Sir Walter Scott.

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  In 1919 the Forestry Commission was set up and soon began replacing lost stocks of trees, using spruce seed from Canada. It’s why there are numerous neat conifer plantations in evidence across the Highlands. Mature trees from plantations are used to supply timber merchants. For years it was transported to sawmills by train but, to save cash, the service was closed.

  As the heavy loads of timber were subsequently transported by lorry, local roads began to suffer. Now there’s a move – popular among local people – to reopen the rail service. A proposed terminal at Crianlarich would take 2,500 tonnes of timber off Scottish roads every week with just one train a day.

  A more surprising industry is taking shape further up the line at Tyndrum, at the far end of Strath Fillan at the foot of the Grampians. A disused station building is the headquarters of a new company that’s hoping to dig for gold. Chris Sangster, an Australian miner who set the company up, intends to bring 20,000 ounces of gold to the surface every year, representing profits of millions of pounds. He believes each tonne of rock mined there is likely to yield up to 10 grams of high-grade gold, worth about £200 and sufficient for a large wedding ring. It would mean jobs for a local economy that’s in the doldrums.

  Tyndrum owes its existence largely to mining. Lead was mined in the hill above nearby Clifton for 100 years or so from 1741. The nineteenth century also saw a previous gold rush which brought an influx of people who duly built cottages for accommodation. But the price of gold fell and jobs were then in short supply. Optimists still pan for gold in the local rivers.

  Tyndrum has two railway stations, which were built to serve different lines. They are only a few hundred yards apart – but 10 miles apart by rail. Shortly before the village the West Highland line splits, with one branch going to Oban and the other to Fort William and on to Mallaig.

  In fact it’s not an original branch line to Oban but the remnant of a railway that preceded the West Highland line by almost a decade. The Callander and Oban Railway opened fully in 1880. It stopped carrying freight in 1965, the same year the portion of rail from Crianlarich east to Callander was closed.

  ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE NATIVE WOODLAND IS LEFT NOW, AND RAILWAYS PLAYED A PART IN ITS DEMISE

  Oban was still a busy commercial centre, as well as a holiday resort, home port for ships heading to Mull and many of the other Western Isles. It not onl
y deserved a railway station, it needed one. So the line became a branch, to all intents and purposes, of the West Highland line.

  The slate quarries established by John and Hugh Stevenson in Oban have not endured in the same way as the distillery they started, which is still producing single malt whisky today.

  © Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

  Our battered old copy of Bradshaw was published long before the West Highland line was built, so for this section of our journey we needed to use a later edition. There it tells us that in the 1880s when the railway arrived Oban had a population of just 2,500. Today the number of residents still only numbers around 8,000, although that number triples in the summer with the arrival of tourists.

  But it’s not only the passenger ferries or indeed the merchant ships upon which the town is centred. It’s the home of one of the oldest licensed distilleries in Scotland, and they have been making single malt whisky here for more than 200 years.

  The distillery, dating from 1793, was established in an old brewery by brothers John and Hugh Stevenson, who also set up slate quarries, a tannery and a boat-building yard in Oban. It’s changed hands several times since then but it’s still a small operation, with two 670,000-litre stills used to produce only high-value single malts.

  Back on the West Highland line proper it’s time to cross Rannoch Moor, where the line is built on a floating causeway of brushwood. It was the only way engineers could cross the peaty plateau, which is both starkly desolate and stunningly beautiful.

  The isolation of Rannoch Moor is difficult to comprehend. Certainly the team of railway surveyors who set off from here in January 1889 found it so. Seven men – among them engineers and a solicitor – set about their task with determination. However, they wore business clothes rather than rugged outdoor gear and carried umbrellas. Their pitiful kit was no match for the weather or the environment. Quickly disorientated, they were soon mired in peat bogs in freezing rain. One man fell and was knocked unconscious for four hours. He got to safety by following a fence which led to a cottage. The rest were saved by a rescue party made up of shepherds. A day later the moor was smothered in snow, and all would have died. Undaunted by their experiences, the party continued with the survey as soon as they were able. It wasn’t long before accommodation was built for construction workers. Today it is a hotel and remains, bar the railway line, very secluded, being some 40 miles from the nearest garage and shop.

  This section, like most of the line between Loch Lomond and Fort William, is single track. It means there must be special precautions to avoid head-on collisions. When the line was built a single token would be issued for the line section. The train driver in possession of the leather token knew he had right of way. Conversely, a train driver without the token knew something might be coming down the track.

  Today it’s an electronic token, transmitted by radio signal. It can only be ‘released’ by the train driver when his journey is completed. It means the line can be operated by few signallers with little infrastructure, so it is safe and cost effective. However, radio electronic token block, as it is properly called, is already obsolete and due to be replaced by European technology.

  Corrour, which opened in 1894, is the highest main-line station in the UK. Its purpose was to serve the hunting lodge there. Owners of the estate had invested in the railway so that guests could make their way towards this remote spot, before a carriage ride and a steamer trip brought them to their accommodation. For the rich it was ideal territory for hunting, shooting, fishing and stalking. While blood sports still play a part, estates like this are now usually more geared to conservation.

  The isolation and soft ground of Rannoch Moor threw up new challenges for railway engineers, who ultimately built the line on Brushwood.

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  Bradshaw’s guidebook offered the following description of what it called Inverness-shire but we know better as the Highlands: ‘Its surface is in general extremely rugged and uneven, consisting of vast ranges of mountains, separated from each other by narrow and deep valleys. These mountains stretch across the whole country from one end of the island to another and lie parallel to every valley, rising like immense walls on both sides, while the intersected country sinks deep between them with a lake or rapid river or an arm of the sea.’

  Among this impressive landscape lie the ‘parallel roads’, one of the great geological puzzles of the nineteenth century. Travelling through Glen Roy it’s impossible to miss what appear to be three parallel roads that stretch as far as the eye can see. The roads form perfect contour lines, snaking in and out of the glen’s irregular sides but – like tidemarks on a bath – maintaining precisely the same height throughout. Naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–82) felt sure the marks signified ancient marine shorelines. However, two years after he announced his theory, Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz (1807–73) countered it with another, claiming signs of a bygone ice age. Glaciers had formed plugs in the glen which had then filled with water. In 1861, after in-depth research of the roads was published, Darwin admitted he was wrong.

  As Ben Nevis hoves into view it’s impossible not to marvel at its dimensions. According to Bradshaw, ‘Ben Nevis – the highest peak in Scotland or in the United Kingdom – is 4,406 ft above the sea and 20 miles around the base. The ascent takes three to four hours to the top, from which there is a grand prospect in clear weather.’

  For Victorians it was a major draw. A pony track was opened to its top in 1883 and, after the railway reached Fort William in 1894, climbing the mountain became a popular pastime. Two women ran a Temperance hotel at the summit to cater for visitors. The following year a barber from Fort William ran up the mountain in the first timed ascent, giving rise to a series of hill running events. The Ben Nevis race is now a regular sporting fixture every September.

  AMONG THIS IMPRESSIVE LANDSCAPE LIE THE ‘PARALLEL ROADS’, ONE OF THE GREAT GEOLOGICAL PUZZLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

  The pony track was created with a more serious venture in mind, however. On 17 October 1883 the Ben Nevis Observatory opened, funded by private donations, including one from Queen Victoria. It followed groundwork carried out by Clement Lindley Wragge (1852–1922), who climbed the mountain daily for sustained periods to make observations about the weather. The permanent observatory was a response to this endeavour by the Scottish Meteorological Society, which funded three staff there. Bravely they went out in terrible weather to take readings. Although the building closed in 1904 for lack of cash, the readings taken in the two decades it was open provided fundamental and comprehensive data on mountain weather.

  Fort William, the next town on the route, sits on the eastern shore of Loch Linnhe beneath Ben Nevis and was once of major strategic importance. The stone fort held out against attack in both Jacobite rebellions in the eighteenth century, but when the railway came in 1864 it was in the way and was demolished.

  Ben Nevis is a sight of unparalleled grandeur in Britain, attracting walkers – and sometimes runners – from across the nation.

  Photo © Christie’s Images/The Bridgeman Art Library

  Glenfinnan Viaduct possesses unexpectedly graceful lines for a structure made of concrete.

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  Beyond Fort William is the magnificent Glenfinnan Viaduct, across the River Finnan near the head of Loch Shiel, one of a number of bridges and viaducts that would carry trains onward to Mallaig – and the ferry to Skye.

  Sir Robert McAlpine (1847–1934), known as ‘Concrete Bob’, took charge of the Glenfinnan project. McAlpine was a former coal miner who began his construction company in 1869. When it was announced that he was going to build the viaduct entirely of concrete, there were fears that the end result would be a monstrosity. However, the finished viaduct with its 21 arches, each spanning 15 metres, bearing a track some 30 metres above the valley floor, put paid to these anxieties. Not only magnificent but durable, the concrete construction has withstood atrocious weather for well over a century with few sign
s of wear. The viaduct is familiar to many as the one featured in Harry Potter films, used by the Hogwarts Express.

  It was at Glen Finnan that Bonnie Prince Charlie (1720–88) raised his standard in 1745. He was the grandson of King James II, exiled after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. James had been unpopular for being Catholic and pro-French and because he fervently supported the notion that he had a God-given right to rule. Thus his grandson expected at least Catholic and French support, if not divine intervention. Initially, when his standard was raised, it was only a few Highlanders that turned up. Just as hope was fading, some of the clans came to join him en masse, sufficient for an army that would take Edinburgh and embarrass the red-coated Hanoverian forces.

  With Scotland conquered, many of his supporters were keen to draw a line under the lightning campaign, but Bonnie Prince Charlie wanted to take England too. With false promises of French support, he persuaded his men to go on. They got as far as Derby before a weary lack of purpose forced a retreat. The episode ended in the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the last to be fought on British soil. Although the Prince escaped, more than 1,200 of his men died in less than an hour at the hands of a vengeful English force.

  Almost 200 years later, during the Second World War, the Highlands again became a place for fighting men to show unquestioning bravery. When ordinary armed forces were faring badly, Winston Churchill ordered the formation of an elite corps who would undergo rigorous training before being unleashed as a guerrilla force. Between Glenfinnan and the sea was one of the centres for this, Inverailort House. Here Simon Fraser, 17th Lord Lovat (1911–95), a celebrated commando officer, helped set up the first Highland special training centre. (One of his ancestors, the 11th Lord Lovat, fought for the Jacobites at Culloden, having changed sides, and was afterwards executed for treason.)