The West Highland Line 

Crossing bridges and viaducts, through tunnels and cuttings, riding the West Highland Lines is one of the most exhilarating railway journeys in the world. Over moors, round mountains, through glens and alongside rivers and lochs - these lines have got it all! Such was the achievement of the Victorian engineers and navvies that their line still takes you beyond the reach of roads. Even the view across Loch Lomond is better - and no car can take you across the Glenfinnan Viaduct or along the Horseshoe Curve! And there's more to the West Highland Line than simply a breathtaking train ride. Each little station has a story to tell, or a special place to visit. 

The West Highland Line had its official opening on the 11th of August 1894, by the most honourable the Marchioness of Tweeddale. This line made possible a journey through magnificent country which had been, until then, accessible only to deer and sheep. In relatively short distances, there are endless changes of scene. Each bend in the line opens up yet another grand vista, and one is constantly aware of travelling through history. If the history of the country is dramatic, the story of the construction of the West Highland Railway Line is almost equally so. 

Once the problems of financing, striking agreements with landowners, and surveying the route, plus the odd confrontation with militant sabbath observers had been completed, there was the daunting task of laying a line through some of the most rugged and forbidding terrain in Britain. Indeed the survey itself presented huge problems, and on occasions considerable danger. The great wilderness of peat bog and rock which is the Rannoch Moor had proved too much of an obstacle for even the great Scottish civil engineer Thomas Telford, who abandoned his plans for a road there. However, if the West Highland Line was to go ahead, the moor had to be crossed, and in January 1889, a party of 7 gentlemen set out on an exploratory excursion that was almost to cost them their lives. The men were contractors, engineers, a solicitor and 2 estate factors, one of them 60 years old. They were in street clothes and carried umbrellas. It was not long before they were floundering exhausted in the peat bogs, and became separated in the beating rain and freezing cold. One man had a fall and was unconscious for 4 hours, but survived by following a fence which took him to a track, and ultimately to a cottage. In time the party was missed, and saved by a rescue party of shepherds. The day after their misadventure, the moor was obliterated by a blizzard which would most certainly have killed them. It's easy to giggle at these misguided Victorian gents with their brollies and patent leather boots, but they were tough characters. The survey went on and so did the building of the line.