A warm summer
Sunday and in the afternoon my thoughts turned to where I could film trains from,
other than at Perth Station. First stop was Bridge of Earn on what us
euphemistically known as the 'direct' route from Perth to Edinburgh via Ladybank. The real
'direct' route was
shut in the 1960's as detailed in the history pages. But a quick look over
the bridge in the main street, and a drive down the Forteviot Road, where the
railway runs parallel to road for a short distance ruled out those two viewpoints.
Continuing on to Forgandenny I obviously had to look down 'Station Road'.
Which was a no through road and had a good walk from the end of the part where
it looked safe to drive. That ended in a private level crossing which did
offer a good view down the tracks north and southwards. Unfortunately the
southbound trains would have been spoilt by a big round speed restriction sign
about 100 yards or so up the line.
I decided to carry on to Forteviot. Just after the village I found a good
spot not far from the road, and with an 'informal' layby to park in. Mind
you there was a river near by so it could be the fisherman's layby! I took
the camera with me that time, so I took two fairly uninteresting shot of railway
lines in each direction, and headed off to Gleneagles Station by Auchterarder.
The train in the video is the 14.40 Glasgow Queen Street to Elgin via Inverness,
departing Gleneagles at 15.28. It consisted of a three coach TurboStar
unit at the front, and a two coach 150 series at the rear
View from the north end of Gleneagles looking south. The station was
originally built to serve the 5 Star Gleneagles Hotel when it was owned by the
Caledonian Railway. Now it is an unmanned station serving Auchterarder adn
the surrounding area. The Gleneagles Hotel clientel are now far too rich
to travel by train!
Gleneagles Station at the south end looking north. The platform to the
left of the picture was where trains used to stop before heading off down the
Crieff branch. A line which then travelled west from Crieff and joined the Dunblane to Oban
line at St Fillans. The line from Gleneagles to Crieff was closed in the
Beeching era.
The photo on the left is looking south from a bridge on a farm track just to the
south of Forteviot village. The right hand picture is from the same bridge
looking north. Not a lot to see really! I did consider that this would be
a good place to film passing 'specials' but the total lack of any background
features in either view makes me think Gleneagles Station (above) is probably a
better place to provide a different perspective, rather than doing all the
filming from Perth Station.
