Attadale railway station


Attadale railway station is a remote railway station on the Kyle of Lochalsh Line, serving the village of Attadale on Loch Carron in the Highlands, northern Scotland.

History

The station was opened in 1880 by the Dingwall and Skye Railway, but operated from the outset by the Highland Railway.
When the D&SR were forced to cut back the railway during its planning, Attadale was initially chosen as the planned terminus of the shortened line, to allow a suitable location near Loch Carron to build a pier adjacent to the station for steam boats to berth. However, more detailed planning proved this area of the loch quite shallow, which would have meant the large cost of building an extraordinarily long pier. Instead, the line was to terminate further on at Stromeferry, where a deeper section of the loch could be found, meaning the steamers could berth more easily and more closely to the station at a shorter, less expensive pier. Attadale then opened as a request stop ten years after the Dingwall & Skye Railway commenced services.
Initially, Attadale station had just a single wooden shelter for passengers, whilst a large red flag was used for signalling the train to stop. Taken into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway during the Grouping of 1923, the line then passed on to the Scottish Region of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948. When sectorisation was introduced by British Rail, the station became part of ScotRail until the privatisation of British Rail.
The station is from, and has a single platform which is long enough for a two-coach train. The platform has a simple but covered brick waiting room. It featured in episode one of the Channel 4 documentary series Paul Merton's Secret Stations on 1 May 2016, when presenter Paul Merton alighted there en route to visiting a salmon breeding farm on the shores of Loch Carron.

Services

Four trains each way call on weekdays/Saturdays and one each way all year on Sundays, plus a second from May to late September only.