Scotrail adds active travel carriage to West Highland Line trains

As of Tuesday March 11, the 24-seat, 20-bicycle capacity carriage has been added to the 12.22 service departing Glasgow and 17.37 return from Fort William.

The addition of the carriage was made possible following the completion of platform extension work on eight West Highland Line stations carried out by Network Rail.

Although primarily aimed at increasing ‘active travel’ by creating space for skis and other sporting equipment as well as bicycles, the Highland Explorer carriage will also increase passenger capacity.

A total of seven carriages with a capacity of 846 passengers will now serve between Glasgow and Crianlarich.

After two carriages are removed at Crianlarich in order to connect to Oban, the Crianlarich to Fort William section will operate with five carriages carrying up to 572 passengers.

Services beyond Fort William to Mallaig, and between Crianlarich to Oban, will remain unchanged.

Nevis Range, which operates mountain bike and ski activities in Fort William, welcomed the improved connection between the Central Belt and Scotland’s outdoor capital.

Chris O’Brien, CEO of Nevis Range, said: “We’ve been involved at Nevis Range with this concept of the activity carriage for a good few years.

“We have been massively in support of it from the start. We have ever-increasing numbers of people using the hill, particularly for biking, and anything that we can do to assist people to get their bikes to Lochaber is a positive thing.

“Nevis Range is a carbon neutral business that is on the verge of declaring itself net-zero, and anything that we can do to help people get here in a more sustainable fashion is something that we could not support any stronger.

“It is essential for Scotland that the activity carriage idea is rolled out across the nation on multiple lines, and we can’t wait to see the volume of train services increase in Fort William to ease pressure on the road infrastructure and get more people into the outdoors.”