West Highland Line v C&O

[airighdrishaig]

Hi Al et al,

 

1969! I spent July in Applecross travelling via the West Highland, and at Crianlarich crossed the C&O thinking it still extended to Dunblane. In August we went north by car to the Inverness area and my father decided to go to Crianlarich via Loch lubnaig. What a shock to see the empty trackbed! The last week of the holidays were in Oban. Tank wagons on the railway pier yes. My brother discovered that if you leant casually against a buffer you got covered in a greasy mess. I was so glad to have had a few sailings on the old Lochnevis. One night she arrived from Tiree with sheep all over her main passenger deck. They were taken through the streets to the mart. She was spick and span the next day.

Another memory of the railway pier was a man at a small table gutting large dogfish and monkfish, the guts sliding along the pier planks and going plop, the whole scene grotesquely reminiscent of a medieval execution with crowds gaping.

In 1974 a cousin and I were in Oban and I got him to ask if we could travel on the footplate of a 27 as we headed south. No problem. While the second man relaxed with his feet up on the window ledge the driver demonstrated his multitasking ability as he read a newspaper and ate his lunch as we ground our way up to Glencruitten summit.

Speaking of John Thomas' book there is a nice picture of Awe crossing. Sometimes when life has been a bit too full I've imagined myself as part of a signalfamily there enjoying an idyllic existence.....

[pete_mcfarlane]

The last two autumns I've stayed in the Forrestry Commission cabins midway between Callender and Strathyre. These are alongside the old C&O trackbed beside Loch Lubnaig - this is now a long distance footpath and access road to the cabins (well mostly, some of the bridges near the falls of Leny are gone, so the footpath deviates). This section of the line is certainly spectacular. although it's not hard to see why it closed, given how few places of any size there are.

[AngusDe]

Talking of the John Thomas books, I remember (40ish years ago) him coming to our school "Railway Club" once to give us a chat as he was a former pupil, fascinating guy and great books. He was such a gent and always spoke to me at subsequent Model Rails (or whatever it was called back then). 

One thing that always fascinated me was the extensive arrangements at Crainlarich as between the C&O and WH, and between the 2 stations and the connecting spur there were 4 signal boxes, yet according to what I remember reading their was virtually no traffic on the spur until the service rationalisation etc

 

Angus

[airighdrishaig]

Aha, that means you went to Allan Glen's then, AngusDe. Although I was interested in railways from age 0, probably ingrained by daily pram walks past Kelvinbridge mineral yard, it was coming across John Thomas' Scottish Railway History in Pictures in our school library that seemed to connect everything up geography history engineering social studies etc etc.

I was introduced to JT at the Mclellan galleries model railway exhibition one year and the had the pleasure later of sitting beside him on a 101 going to Forfar in 1974. So sad he died at such a relatively early age.

Coming back to the original question, while the C&O had the Ballachulish branch and the Killin railway, their stories didn't compare with the haunting tragi-comedy of the Invergarry and Fort Augustus. JT's attitude to the I&FA seemed to develop. In his The West Highland railway he wrote of the "pathetic little railway" and " all that was now left was a shunting neck at Spean Bridge". But later in Forgotten Railways Scotland he borrowed Biblical/Burns language and wrote of the I&FA lasting till the rocks melt with the sun. I must get back to Invergarry soon so see how the station museum development project is doing.