Pretty enjoyable day today, and a precursor of what is to come. Early start, as we needed to get from Grantown-on-Spey out to Fort William on the west coast in time to catch a 10.15 historic train. It’s a 2 hour drive, which necessitated a particularly hearty high-protein, low carb brekkie.
The Jocobite Train was probably historic enough already, for all the stuff that made it historic – but it has an on-board souvenir shop and that shop sells wands, which should give you a fair hint about why it was hard to get tickets. In some movie about a boy wizard or some such nonsense, the boy has to catch a train and the train goes over a wonderfully sweeping viaduct.
It’s actually a very nice viaduct, and I can see why they chose it.
Steam trains also smell fantastic and sound great, so it was no particular inconvenience at all do do this. Mallaig, where the train ends, seems to be a dual-economy sort of place. For most of the time it is a functional, possibly sleepy, little fishing village. Between 12.05 and 14.10 it is a tourist town providing lunch. Might not be a bad job if you can get it, but we really didn’t have time to discuss that with any of the locals while we got lunch and ran back to the train station!
One other thing about historic trains is that you can really see how the technology has improved over the years.
Everything in one place 