With a passion for walking and for recording locomotives hard at work, A G S Davies was naturally drawn to the more testing territory of western and northern Scotland, with these memories centring on his Scottish rail travels between 1960 and 1964.
The preparation of this article began some time in the summer of 2019; the last paragraph of A S Woodcock’s letter to Steam Days in the February 2020 issue (page 66) brings to mind a family holiday that was spent near Aberfeldy in the mid-1980s. A visit to Fort William (aka ‘The Fort’) was called for, but for other reasons it had to be delayed until the very last day of the week. We had driven from Aberfeldy to Rannoch, intending to return from ‘The Fort’ by the up sleeper, but there were problems, serious, at Tulloch. Suffice to say, for now, that our two teenagers had to spend the night on Rannoch moor!
Although in my mid-20s when I made my first ‘enthusiast’ visits to Scotland, maybe my enthusiasm had been stirred by schooldays, in World War II, in Rothesay. A narrow gauge railway at Ettrick Bay! Also at least one adventurous wartime journey involving a midnight change of train at Carlisle Citadel station. In the end, my rail enthusiasms have always been interwoven with ‘seeing how they go!’ Not necessarily for the ‘speed tune’, exciting though that can be, but for good performance uphill, something that may not be easily recognisable in these diesel and electric days. So I hope that readers will bear with me. In fact, although this tale actually starts in 1960, my interest was aroused by reading of 70mph speeds on the West Highland line (Railway Magazine, September 2019 ‘Practice & Performance’, page 31 et seq.). I should add here that those speeds, with diesel-multiple-unit stock, were only attainable over certain sections of track, e.g. downhill from Tyndrum to Bridge of Orchy. Also, as well as referring to my own random experiences, I also reference some photographs of relevant inter
