A West Highland Adventure
Growing up, a liking for the West Highland lines was fuelled by stunning photographs in Railway World magazine and the line’s appearance on the BBC’s ‘The Train Now Departing’ series. Large logo 37’s were rare beasts on my trips out so appeared quite exotic to a youthful me, maybe it was the Scottie dog logo on the side too. Christmas brought me a Lima model of ‘Oor Wullie’ which I ran on my 8’ by 4’ train set on passenger and sleeper trains or with my collection of Hornby Speedlink wagons. Alongside my Black Five or Apple Green liveried Hornby D49 (standing in for the K1) as my version of the West Highlander. Whilst we never made it up to the west coast of Scotland, my trips with my school friend William got as far as Perth and Stirling where the last of the McRats were spotted on engineering trains. Since then, the closest I’ve got to the West Highland was during my driver training at Polmadie when we used to take a loco into Glasgow Central and haul the Lowlander Sleeper stock bac...
