In April 2026, Dwight, two friends from the UK, and I backpacked Scotland’s Rob Roy Way. We had divided the trek into eight one-day sections, but one leg proved about five miles longer than we thought prudent. To manage the distance, we lopped off those extra miles by taking a country bus from Strathyre, where we had stayed overnight, to Lochearnhead on Loch Earn. There, we planned to pick up the trail again.
An Unexpected Train Station
That day’s route would take us along a lovely rail trail, but the real challenge was just getting to it. The grey arrows on this Ordnance Survey map show our general plan.
The country bus dropped us off at the main road (A85).
From there, we planned to find a path that would take us straight up a hill to join the Rob Roy Way (also called the Glen Ogle Track at this point). From there, we would walk north on the former railroad trackbed.
The first two blocks took us through a residential area before we unexpectedly reached a train station, one with no tracks.
A train station! How could that be? There shouldn’t have been an abandoned railroad here, as we had yet to ascend the hill to meet the Rob Roy Way, itself on an abandoned railroad.
Confused, we explored what had once been Lochearnhead Station. We tried to understand how this train station connected to the railroad line that is now Rob Roy Way hundreds of feet above us.
We learned that the well-preserved station has actually served as a scout camp since the 1960s. A decade earlier, an active train line did run right through here; the station hadn’t been moved from somewhere else.
However, those old trains certainly didn’t take the steep path that we old people did: a straight shot up the hill with absolutely no switchbacks. The combined age of the four of us is about 300 years, but somehow, we all made it to the top without incident.
View from Rob Roy Way several hundred feet above Lochearnhead Station. The crumbling fence is a relic from railroad days.
From there we were treated to a glorious hike to Killin where we checked into an inn for the night.
Solving the Mystery of the Unexpected Train Station
When I got back to Minneapolis, I decided to do a bit of research. This railway map from the early 20th Century shows exactly what was going on.
On the map, I’ve highlighted in blue what the route from Lochearnhead to Killin via Balquhidder and Killin Junction would have been if we could have gone by train. I consulted my copy of a reprint of Bradshaw’s July 1938 Railway Guide.
First, we’d catch the 9:47 a.m. from Lochearnhead to Balquhidder:
This would have been an interesting experience. The incline was notorious, requiring four steam locomotives to push and drag each train up the hill. An article in The Locomotive Magazine from 1903 describes the incline:
A 1-in-60 climb is steep by railroad standards. Our climb was closer to 1-in-6: no wonder we were a bit puffed when we joined the Rob Roy Way at the top!
At Balquhidder we’d catch the 10:00 a.m. to Killin Junction.
Then at Killin Junction we’d catch the 10:30 a.m. to Killin.
Total journey time: about an hour, assuming we made both the connections. Personally, I’ll stick with our slow hike, quietly taking in the wonderful views and remaining in awe of the engineering and sheer labor that made the rail trail possible.
