Scotrail services turn around at Mallaig

[Fen Enthusiast]

I'm planning a return excursion journey from Glasgow Queen Street to Mallaig. According to Realtime Trains, the 08:21 departure from Glasgow Queen Street terminates at Mallaig at 13:38, but there are no departures until 16:05 with a service to Glasgow Queen Street. So am I right in thinking that between 13:38 and 16:05, there's a whole two and a half hours where there are no arrivals or departures? It's hard for someone like myself from a fairly densely part of East Anglia to get my head around the idea of an end of the line station having such a huge interval between services .

 

[InkyScrolls]

It's quite normal on sparsely used, long branchlines to have large gaps between services. An example local to me is the Bentham Line, between Skipton and Lancaster, which has gaps of up to three and a half hours.

 

[Iskra]

I'm planning a return excursion journey from Glasgow Queen Street to Mallaig. According to Realtime Trains, the 08:21 departure from Glasgow Queen Street terminates at Mallaig at 13:38, but there are no departures until 16:05 with a service to Glasgow Queen Street. So am I right in thinking that between 13:38 and 16:05, there's a whole two and a half hours where there are no arrivals or departures? It's hard for someone like myself from a fairly densely part of East Anglia to get my head around the idea of an end of the line station having such a huge interval between services .

Yes, there are only handful of services per day. I found a nice pub/restaurant and had a walk out to the next station down the line in that time where I caught the train back to Fort William. It's quite a scenic place, so a couple of hours there is no bad thing.

 

[hexagon789]

I'm planning a return excursion journey from Glasgow Queen Street to Mallaig. According to Realtime Trains, the 08:21 departure from Glasgow Queen Street terminates at Mallaig at 13:38, but there are no departures until 16:05 with a service to Glasgow Queen Street. So am I right in thinking that between 13:38 and 16:05, there's a whole two and a half hours where there are no arrivals or departures? It's hard for someone like myself from a fairly densely part of East Anglia to get my head around the idea of an end of the line station having such a huge interval between services .

That's correct; it was worse under the 'temporary' reduced timetable when there were only 2 trains a day. Then the next one was the following day!

 

[30907]

I'm planning a return excursion journey from Glasgow Queen Street to Mallaig. According to Realtime Trains, the 08:21 departure from Glasgow Queen Street terminates at Mallaig at 13:38, but there are no departures until 16:05 with a service to Glasgow Queen Street. So am I right in thinking that between 13:38 and 16:05, there's a whole two and a half hours where there are no arrivals or departures? It's hard for someone like myself from a fairly densely part of East Anglia to get my head around the idea of an end of the line station having such a huge interval between services .

Mallaig is operated as an extension of Fort William, which in turn operates in conjunction with Oban. Yours is the one train daily that is out-and-back from Glasgow, and 1605 gives a reasonable late-evening arrival into Glasgow.

Of course there is now a more frequent service to Oban, and no doubt the timetable will eventually be rethought, but I wouldn't want too tight a turnround anyway on a 5hr 20min run!

Operationally the crews for this pair work out of Mallaig IIRC.

 

[181]

For several months of the year the Jacobite steam train departs at 14.10, and for slightly fewer months its afternoon service arrives at 15.06, so there are train movements during that time, but of course they're not part of the ordinary train service.