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Unfortunately it was the winter and so completely dark!

It’s not only the potential faff of changing trains. I bumped into a friend at Inverness station meeting her parents off the Chieftan from KX. She was taking them back down to Fort William. Apparently they were uneasy about changing in Glasgow (TBF that obvs also means changing station) but...

Not too many trains but the bar adjacent to Dingwall (the Mallard) certainly used to have tables and chairs - or benches - outside, on the platform.

I wonder if they had a little game with themselves to see if they could weird someone out and get them to move (almost like a ‘Candid Camera’ type thing) It would irritated me and I would have moved almost immediately. I’d like to think it would be with a witty, tart comment - but I’m too...

For a while there was a very early service from Perth to Inverness - it was the only ScotRail that got in from the south before 0900. But it left Perth too early to allow a connection from Glasgow or Edinburgh. The twice I travelled on it there were never more than 4 people on it - including...

I fairly often get the last train south from Inverness (2023) and, especially in the winter, there will be fewer than 10 people on it - often only 5/6. On one occasion I was the only passenger from Aviemore to Perth.

For views Corpach is hard to beat (as well as being a cute little station) For station itself then Wemyss Bay.

It was quite common among older people to refer to the station as the Waverley (“I took a taxi to the Waverley”) but that seems to have died out now. Of course “to get off at Haymarket” means something quite different in Scotland …..

I notice on the ScotRail App that the suspension of all services on the WHL and HML with no bus replacement is classed as Minor Disruption

When you brand (demote) lines as ‘Great Scenic Rail Journeys’ you can simply treat them as tourist novelties.

ScotRail’s marketing of the WHL, NHL etc as “Scotland’s Scenic Railways” reduces them to mere tourist novelties.

Similarly any domestic flight from Heathrow is a ‘shuttle’ (a concept that ended in the 80s) and anyone out at night is a ‘reveller’. Does anyone, other than journalists, actually say reveller?

Fort William was at 140k (pre-Covid) with 3 in each direction + 1 to/from Mallaig + seasonal steam to/from Mallaig + sleeper. Maximum of 12 departures / day.

Goodness knows what you’ll see because anything goes at 0-ban….

I remember reading that The Deerstalker Express was initially pejorative and coined by a [famously right-wing] newspaper when there was discussion of how much it was subsidised and should it be included in the ‘socially necessary’ (or some such) service. The newspaper was trying to make out it...

Pomona is also the name of Orkney Mainland (just to confuse things further!)

I wonder if the “1st train, 2nd train, 3rd train” signs used on busy platforms threw them? If you’re not used to it or just glance at them it can be easy done (if you don’t know the different liveries)

I’m afraid it rather cements my view that services outwith the ‘seven cities’ hourglass are treated as little more than tourist novelties as opposed to a vital part of the infrastructure in remote areas.

I noticed that too. Edit: The football story is still top of the BBC Scotland news site.