In July 1903, the Invergarry and Fort Augustus Railway was completed with plans for the railway to span the entire length of the Great Glen to Inverness. Nevertheless, the low population in the Highlands made such a line financially unviable leading to its eventual closure by the London and North Eastern Railway in December 1946.
Over 70 years since the closure of this line, Love Productions commissioned a television series about the large scale undertaking to lay the world’s longest model railway (in 0 gauge) from Fort William to Inverness, a distance of just under 80 miles (117km)! Unaware of this project’s timeline, we observed a piece of plastic which looked suspiciously like railway track along the path. Dad’s notion that it was a piece of railway track was quickly dismissed a pure folly!
As our journey continued we came across filming notices and miles of laid railway. We even encountered the storage depot where used track and permanent way structures were being transported away. All in all, it appears that we just missed the only train to ever cross the Great Glen.