Scenic route
West Highland Line
Glasgow → Mallaig · Scotland
West Highland Line in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 264 km
- Fastest time
- 5 h 20 min
- Average speed
- 50 km/h
- Top speed
- 100 km/h
- Operator
- ScotRail
- Train
- Class 156 · Jacobite steam
- Countries
- Scotland
- In service since
- 1901
- Runs
- 3× daily each way (fewer Sun); Jacobite steam Apr–Oct
- Highest point
- 410 m
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Regularly voted the world’s most scenic railway: around Rannoch Moor and over the 21-arch Glenfinnan Viaduct of film fame.
North of Craigendoran the line abandons the Clyde commuter belt and sets off alone across country no road dares follow. It rounds the Horseshoe Curve beneath Beinn Dòrain, floats over blanket bog on a mattress of brushwood and ash, and calls at Corrour, a platform miles from the nearest public road. Beyond Fort William comes the 1901 Mallaig Extension: concrete viaducts, white-sand beaches and the Small Isles on the horizon before the fishing boats of Mallaig.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 3224918 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 42 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 15 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: ScotRail timetables — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Loch Long and Loch Lomond shores
- Horseshoe Curve below Beinn Dòrain
- Corrour — Britain’s highest station
- Ben Nevis above Fort William
- Glenfinnan Viaduct over Loch Shiel
- silver sands of Morar
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