Royal Scotsman
The Royal Scotsman is a luxury passenger train in Scotland . The train runs from Edinburgh Waverley Station to the Scottish Highlands from April to October . The elite nostalgic train can accommodate up to 36 people during the three to eight-day rail cruise. During the reception ritual, passengers at the train station, accompanied by a bagpiper , walk over a red carpet into the late 19th-century train. The modernized cars used date from the 1950s and have been converted accordingly. The train was put into service in 1985 by the Great Scottish & Western Railway Company , at that time partly with older wagons from the pre-war period. These have since been replaced by newer vehicles. Since 2005 the Royal Scotsman has been owned by Belmond Ltd. operated, a hotel and cruise company based in Bermuda that has been part of the luxury group LVMH since 2018 .
The train set of the Royal Scotsman has two dining cars , "Swift" with tables for two and four, and "Raven" with tables for six and eight people. Both dining cars are paneled with mahogany and there is a strict dress code for passengers. The saloon car with comfortable sofas and armchairs has numerous panoramic windows and an outside terrace. In the four sleeping cars, the twin and single compartments are equipped with a shower and toilet. At night, the train stops either on a side track or at a station.
The locomotive pulls the burgundy-red wagons on their way through the Highlands past the Rannoch moor and the 1,345-meter-high Ben Nevis and drives over the 380-meter-long Glenfinnan Viaduct at Loch Shiel .
The train is accompanied by a coach that takes the passengers on the daily excursions. Local fishermen, private mansions, whiskey distilleries, a salmon smokehouse, the Highland Games in Mallaig and Eilean Donan Castle are visited .
The Royal Scotsman is not to be confused with another train with a similar name, the Flying Scotsman . The latter is a passenger train that operates year-round exclusively between London King's Cross Station and Edinburgh Waverley Station .
