(train engine noise)
Morning, it's a rather chilly mist
over Fort William this morning, August Scottish morning.
I find myself in Scotland for something else.
But whilst here I realised I could tick off not one,
but two request stops with a small gambit,
hence I'm on the 8:30 out of Fort William
to tick off Locheilside and Lochailort.
I really hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
(train clattering)
So with my map up, here's the deal.
There's three request stops along this line.
Locheilside, Lochailort and Beasdale.
Beasdale - oh, hang on, that's just mega impressive.
Oh my god, look at that.
It's okay I've got the drone.
There will be a shot of the Loch when I get there.
Now, so what I figured I do,
is get the train to Locheilside
and I looked to walk to Lochailort,
which is the other request stop,
but it would take three hours.
So I then looked at a bus service and there's a 502 bus.
And if you looked -
I looked on Google Streetview,
and outside Locheilside station
there's no actual physical bus stop.
Even though Google Maps and the street maps
says there are little bus stops.
So I reckon 502 will whizz past
at about seven minutes past nine.
But that would only give me like 15 minutes at Locheilside
and the bus wouldn't expect me to be there
to flag it down and I might miss it.
I've been to the taxi rank at Fort William this morning,
and I've said, "can you come and get me at Locheilside
between 09:15 and 09:30?
And that should give me enough time.
And then he's going to drive me to Lechailort
and then drop me off.
He'll go back to Fort William
and I'll then check out Lochailort,
and then wait for the train back to Fort William.
So that's how I'm doing it,
with a taxi -
oh, text -
taxi between Locheilside and Lochailort.
(train whirring)
Thank you sir. - [Train Worker] Thank you.
See you again. See you on the way back.
I'll see you somewhere.
(Geoff laughs)
Hopefully.
(train engine noise)
Welcome.
Oh, there's trees in the way of the Loch.
Welcome to, it's Locheil,
so it's Locheilside.
Yeah, it's a nothing kind of station.
(car engine noise)
There is a shelter, but current situation and all,
it says very clearly "not in use".
Mainly, what I want to know is,
if I hadn't of paid for the taxi,
if I'd done the bus gambit,
and I guess I would have had to have
flagged down the bus as well.
Request stop with request bus.
It's not even a bus, it's a coach.
It's what I love about buses in Scotland,
they're all coaches.
(car engine noise)
There's just a main road.
There ain't no bus stop here.
There is no bus stop.
In fact all there is at Locheilside
is just a main road with traffic speeding along.
Excellent.
So what the heck does this station serve then?
Nothing (laughs).
(footsteps on gravel)
(gate clangs)
YouTube, I've found out what is at Locheilside station,
it's basically, it's for cobwebs.
Can you see there's cobwebs here,
there's cobwebs down on the bench there,
more importantly on the non-working, Scot Rail,
on the non-working dot matrix indicator
there's cobwebs hanging from that as well.
I can see a bus coming.
Here it comes here. Here it comes.
Here it comes. Here it comes. Here it comes.
(motorbike engine noise)
This is the bus.
(bus engine roaring)
Now I would have had to have somehow
flagged that down and stopped it,
which I don't think would have been possible
because there's no bus stop here.
But that was it.
That was the bus I could have got if my friend in the taxi,
who I really hope turns up,
he made me pay in advance, which is fine.
So I've already paid a gentlemen some money,
to drive out and pick me up any second.
Let's go sit on the bench.
Nope. Nope. Hang on.
(laughs)
I'm not allowed to sit on the bench either.
(birds chirping)
(car engine noise)
There's my taxi.
(car door opens)
Hello sir,
sit in the back?
Remind me of your name again, sir?
Ron.
Hello Ron, how you doing?
What's your name? - Geoff.
And I like trains (laughs).
Thank you so much. - [Ron] Okay.
Might See you later, all right?
Right.
Cheers mate, bye-bye.
(taxi door shuts)
(car engine noise)
That was about twenty-five minutes in the taxi.
Station's up there.
(footsteps on gravel)
So, Lochailort.
This is a much prettier station
and there's a couple of benches here.
They don't have the sign saying "you can't sit here".
So presumably I can sit on the bench.
The dot matrix here is working.
So let's just go on 10 o'clock now.
The train back to Fort William is at 10:41.
And there is a shelter, which again is saying,
hasn't got a seat,
but it's got like a little bottom perch, rail,
which I'm never really a fan of.
There's a sign again saying "not in use".
And all the while I've been walking
down the length of the platform,
the astute amongst you would have noticed
the abandoned second platform on the other side.
There's a little digger there as well
in the curve in the track.
So the other one was quite functional.
This one feels much more lovely.
(car road noise).
I'm reading good old Wikipedia,
it says here, station opened in 1901,
up-loop was lifted in 1966.
There was a signal box erected.
The foundations of which can now be seen
at the one end of the single platform.
So where are the foundations to the signal box?
What I've noticed is that there is a barrow crossing.
Barrow crossing down there which leads to the platform,
which you can't get to.
But there's also a gate as if to suggest
that a farmer might go through with this tractor,
but there's no road or path the other side,
but the crossing is still there.
I'm pleased that dot matrix is working.
There is a bin.
There's a car park, bizarrely.
You could park your car here for the commute to Glasgow.
And it's even got,
it's got what I call like a cubic-style ticket reader.
(card reader machine beeps)
A card reader.
(card reader machine beeps).
The fun game to play to always tap your oyster card
against those and it errors with like a -
I recognise that there's an NFC chip,
but just not one that is compatible with my system.
(card reader machine beeps)
What I do want to tell you though,
is the fact that this isn't the first time
that I've ever been here,
but for that, we'll need to go back down -
traffic (car engine noise) -
need to go back down to the car park.
(footsteps on gravel)
(loud road noise)
This is the car park.
And I knew that this was here.
'Cause I've driven here before and parked car here.
I worked it out.
It's almost 20 years ago.
The year is 2001.
And I'd driven up from London to my friend, Neil.
Neil, if you're watching, I haven't spoken to you in years,
maybe since your wedding.
And he got married just down the way here.
And I drove up.
I actually, no, I flew to Glasgow and then I hired a car,
had a little Mercedes A1,
remember those little things?
You don't see those anymore.
And I drove up, I don't know why I didn't get the train.
I just drove because where the wedding was
there was no station.
But this, it turns out was the nearest station.
And as I was driving along,
I remember seeing signs down on the road there,
you know, the double arrow,
and I was like "station".
And by complete fluke,
I pulled in just to like take a photo of it.
And I parked the car,
and I parked the car here,
there's a little blue Mercedes A1 just here.
And just as I'm thinking,
"I wonder when the next train is",
it's answered because the train then came a-trundling in
and I've got this picture of me standing there,
for some reason I got the car in frame
and then the train next to it.
And for many years I had this photo on my hard drive
until around 2014 when I had an unexpected
hard drive failure and I didn't have a backup (laughs).
So, but in my memory,
I can recall a picture of me and the car.
I did like a self-timer thing,
grinning, doing a thumbs up, car, train.
And otherwise this would be the perfect point
to drop that photo in and recreate it.
But I'm here 19 years later and it feels great.
(train whirring)
I made it (laughs).
You made it!
I made it (laughs).
(train clatters on track)
Okay there we go, two more request stops ticked off.
That just leaves Beasdale at the line on this line to do,
which is also in the top 10
of Scotland's least used stations,
so that might form part
of a "least used stations" video as well.
We'll see.
At some point I'll do a summary video
describing which ones I've done,
which ones I still have to tick off,
all that kind of stuff.
The link to the request dot map
and least used station map is down in the description.
I'm trying to get a view, a shot of the Glenfinnan Viaduct
which I think is coming up.
I'll leave you with that.
(train clatters on track)