UKC

Watching a Channel 5 programme about train journeys.  This image was part of the introduction. It’s quite a nice image, which I’m sure is Storr and hence a total fabrication. Am I missing something?

Yep, total fabrication!

It could be a particularly long juggernaut with very poorly tuned engine....

But I think it's more likely they just lied to you.

Course I don't know the history of Skye, so it's not outwith the realms of possiblity that there once was a train there for some reason (the terrain wouldn't be impossible to build a track through), it's hard to imagine what could possibly have provided the financial impetus to build it however. So I think "no train, not ever" is most likely.

Ng494601 maybe the source?

Looks like someone has set The Very Hungry Caterpillar on fire, on the A855.

There was an old narrow guage line to a diatomite mine just north of there but not in that view.

There was something on tv recently. Julie Walters took a train from Fort William to Mallaig went through a bit of Skye and got the train at Kyle.

That would be an even bigger lie. Nothing on Skye can burn outdoors. You could flick a lit match into a puddle of petrol and the constant driving rain would make sure it never caught

Hmm. Good spot. I have to say I didn't see any sign of anything there last time I was up at Lealt but I probably didn't walk over where the line was so maybe it's still visible.

You can see the outline of the old track as it approaches loch cruithir. Some old bits of machinery and an old car embedded in the bank of the Lealt. Not much left to see at all.

Looks like a train running along the A855, looking N across Loch Leathan...

According to Wilfrid F Simms' 1999 booklet Railways of Skye & Raasay (ISBN 1 902822 30 X) the section running NE-SW roughly parallel to the track and the Lealt River is "well preserved with a quite substantial embankment above the river".  It also says that the stretch after the point where it crossed the track and swung westwards towards Loch Cuithir is "well defined and clearly visible despite the state of the encroaching vegetation".

As a 2ft narrow gauge mineral railway it is unlikely to have looked anything like what is shown in the OP's picture.  According to Simms the line was worked manually and with horses from 1890 to 1906, when it was re-laid with heavier rails and gentler gradients to allow a small 0-4-0 locomotive to be used.  According to an unsubstantiated story that locomotive "fell in to the river in 1910 and was left there".

The original diatomite mining operation had totally ceased by 1914, but was re-started in 1937, again using the narrow gauge line for transport to the coast.  It seems that the track was lifted for the whole length of the line some time during or after WWII.

There is a more well-known defunct narrow gauge railway on Skye, which carried marble from the quarries near Kilchrist below Bheinn Shuardail to the pier at Broadford.  IIRC there is a walking trail that follows the line of the railway, and there are quite a few railway-related remains scattered about the Kilchrist area.

In the late nineteenth century a couple of proposals for public carrier light railways on Skye were floated.  The Highland Railway's scheme of 1897 involved a line of 14½ miles from Kyleakin via Broadford to Torrin, as an extension of the Stromeferry to Kyle line.  The second scheme, which was associated with the North British Railway's line on the mainland to Mallaig, involved a line from Isleornsay via Broadford, Sligachan and Portree to Uig, with a branch to Dunvegan.  Surveys were apparently carried out for the 70-odd miles of this 1898 scheme but, as with the Highland Railway's scheme, nothing ever came of it.

It's as much fanciful artistic licence as the 1954 SYHA handbook having a Scottish hostel nestling below the Wetterhorn!  Might have been a play on the centenary though!

Wasn't that still the age of clearances?  Perhaps that intervened.  I seem to remember people still living on the mainland in the 80s who spoke of experiencing clearances in the 1890s as small children

This website maps out all the old and current railway lines of the UK, including old mine workings. Skye seems to be clear.

https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php

Pretty interesting map, if not slightly sad, that we had such good links that are now all gone.

Cheers Beeching.

It could be a motorhome

Mostly but not always true - last time I was in Skye (the summer of 2017) I passed the fire brigade damping down a large moorland fire just past the Sligachan!

You need to select the right layer - there's a button for this at the upper left, next to the "News" button.  The Skye Marble Railway and the Lealt Valley Diatomite Railway are on the "Industry" layer.

Selecting all layers gives you everything from HS2 to parkland miniature railways.  There's even the pretty obscure Dalmunzie Railway at Spittal of Glenshee, the remnants of which some UKCers might have stumbled across while wandering around that area: https://www.railscot.co.uk/Dalmunzie_Railway/index.php

Ahh yes, my excuse for not noticing this would be that it has changed since I last used it.

But a very interesting website, spent many an hour exploring all the old railways around Wales and the North, when I should of been working.

The style looks like early/mid 20th century railway publicity posters that would be displayed in stations all over the country. The line to Kyle of Lochalsh connected with the ferries over to Skye and the misty isle would have been a big draw for rail tourism. Take a look at railwayposters.co.uk for some examples.

It would seem someone has added a train to this:

https://www.airdoldchurchgallery.co.uk/product-page/the-storr-isle-of-skye