Strathspey Railway

The Strathspey Railway runs for ten miles through the heart of Badenoch and Strathspey in the Scottish Highlands. It follows part of the old Inverness and Perth Junction Railway, a line built in the 19th century to link Aviemore with Forres. Trains leave from Aviemore station, using platform three, and travel north through Boat of Garten to Broomhill. This is one of the few surviving main lines in Britain to be preserved and run as a heritage railway. The railway keeps its steam locomotives in a restored shed built by the Highland Railway in 1898. The shed once housed engines for routes to Perth and Inverness, and later saw LMS Stanier Black Fives and Fairburn Tanks. Today the shed still bears the code ‘60B’ on its engines. A modern carriage shed opened in 2005 lets volunteers work indoors on the fleet. Nearby, Spey Lodge was built by the LMS in the Second World War as crew accommodation and now offers hostel beds to volunteers. Beyond Aviemore the line passes Dalfaber level crossing and climbs through Granish Moor, where heather gives views of Cairngorm Mountain. At Boat of Garten station, built in 1904, visitors find an original waiting room with an open fire and a new coffee shop in the old gas house. The station has two signal boxes and the railway’s only water column for locomotives. Trains then run beside the River Spey to Broomhill, a quiet countryside terminus once used as Glenbogle station in the BBC series Monarch of the Glen.