The train service from Lancaster to Scotland was not very good in the 1980s with the arrivals in Glasgow and Edinburgh before 11:00 being impossible and the last train back was before 18:00. This meant that much of Scotland was out of reach for a day trip. North of Stirling or Dundee remained undiscovered. This part of Scotland was of great interest to rail enthusiasts as during this period all trains were loco hauled outside Glasgow and Edinburgh and push pull Class 47/7s worked between the two cities with some extensions to Aberdeen. Many trains were still operating with steam heating rather than electric.

Eastfield Depot in Glasgow has started to break away from BR Blue livery with adding small West Highland terriers, white stripes and the addition of names of Lochs on the West Highland Line.

Scotland was a place I wanted to visit. At the age of 15 I had decided to purchase my first Freedom of Scotland ticket. To go with this I also purchased an Area 2 Rover which covered Lancaster to Carlisle. The reason for this was so that the trip could be made in 2 day chunks. I had only managed to save enough money for the tickets and could not afford accommodation so would spend the nights away on an overnight trains. We could come home every other day, have a shower and a good night’s sleep then return to Scotland and continue the tour.

In this year there was still a large number of overnight trains still running. If I remember correctly there were 6 overnight trains in each direction between London and Scotland, 2 Inverness, 1 Aberdeen, 1 Fort William, 1 Glasgow and 1 Edinburgh. There was also an internal Scottish sleeper train between Glasgow and Edinburgh and Inverness and Aberdeen.

I did have a travelling companion for this trip but I have no idea who this was and I have very few photos from the week. I was probably someone I was at school with.

The Scottish Region was also very good at granting permits to visit maintenance depots. A plan was drawn up that included new lines which had never been visited before and lots of visits to depots in search of new numbers. You showed the permit and were allowed to wander round mostly on your own and the safety briefing was “Don’t get knocked over by a train”. Can you imagine this happeing in 2009 with Health and Safety Rules.

The purchase of the Freedom of Scotland was proving difficult and was not available from my local station. The first train we were travelling on was the sleeper to Inverness so this meant we had to go to Carlisle on the earlier train go to the ticket office to purchase the Freedom of Scotland then join the Inverness sleeper.

On the first day we had to catch the last train to Preston as the sleeper train did not stop at Lancaster. The sleeper trains of 1983 were principally formed of Mk1 compartment stock and sleepers. The carriages were able to be electrically heated by the electric locomotive and steam heated by the diesel in Scotland. We managed on both trains to find an unoccupied compartment switch the lights to “Dim” an get some sleep. The compartments were fantastic for getting sleep as you could stretch out across the compartment like being in bed.

The trip went as planned. The highlight was arriving back at Aberdeen station to find 2 Class 26s at the head of our train to Inverness.

Traction Log: