SCOTLAND rightly prides itself on the magnificence of its scenery, especially in the Highlands.
One of the best ways of experiencing spectacular mountains, glens and lochs should be through the windows of a railway carriage. The Highlands offer a spectacular landscape, criss-crossed by a network of adventurous railway lines built, against all the odds, across peat moors, along loch shores, through rocky cuttings and around precipitous mountain slopes. However, there is no attempt to make the most of this fabulous national asset.
The potential is enormous, but with the sole exception of the Jacobite train on the West Highland line from Fort William to Mallaig - a daily steam-hauled service operating throughout the summer - visitors taking the train to Mallaig, Kyle of Lochalsh, Oban, Fort William, or across the Caithness flow country to Thurso and Wick must suffer in ScotRail's noisy, rattling old diesel railcars.
These are frequently overcrowded, the windows are small and often sufficiently coated in grime to block out the lovely scenery, and many seats have no window at all. The staff, it must be said, are always friendly and there is sometimes a refreshment trolley, but this is a resource lamentably under-exploited.
Added to this, the alarming growth in recent years of line-side trees is rapidly robbing the railway lines of their through-the-window vistas altogether.
Until fairly recently trains offered panoramic views of Loch Lomond, the shores of the Clyde estuary, Glen Falloch, the spectacular gorges on the River Spean or at Killikrankie. But no longer. Loch Garve is now invisible behind its screen of trees, as is the approach to Glenfinnan viaduct, and the climb up to Tyndrum and beyond to the famous horseshoe curve - otherwise open moorland - runs through its own green tunnel. Everywhere silver birch, mountain ash, rhododendron, sycamore and alder sprout in profusion. In some places branches brush the carriage windows, and photographers are constantly frustrated as clump after clump obscures their subject. Even views on the spectacular run along the shores of Loch Carron are now disappearing, which is nothing short of a tragedy.
This is a truly worrying circumstance. Owing to lack of maintenance and lack of enterprise by current rail operators in the Highlands, Scotland is losing one of its potentially best tourist attractions - the scenic train ride. The growth of trees beside the line is a grave problem, as sooner or later these must be felled for safety purposes. And the lack of any entrepreneurial body willing to provide rolling stock or services aimed at the tourist is a serious failure in a region otherwise very much concerned with, and successful at promoting this beautiful country to visitors.
Graham Beard (Managing regular rail-based tours of the Scottish Highlands),
10 Ennismore Road,
Liverpool.
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