Dunrobin Station, Scotland, United KingdomThis morning I was leaving Inverness and continuing north to the northern tip of Scotland at Thurso while making a layover to Dunrobin Castle on route. After my experience yesterday when the Edinburgh-Inverness train was cancelled and all the overflow passengers tried to board or were left behind at Stirling, and those of us on board had to stand blocking the aisle creating safety hazards, I did not know if I could trust these trains.
As I had an "Anytime" ticket it meant I could get off at Dunrobin and get back on vs buying two tickets for each leg which cost more
There were three trains, 7am, 10.41am, or 2pm (the 6.31pm would be too late to visit Dunrobin). Because there was about a 3 hour wait between trains this would give me time to goto Dunrobin Castle and join the next train. I was going to sleep in and catch the 10.41am train but after my experience yesterday I dont trust these trains so went to the station to catch the 7am so that I had back up trains.
The train was on the display board so it had not been cancelled. However Dunrobin Castle station had an 'X' beside it. What does that mean? Does that mean it will run thru and will not stop at this station?
It was hard to find staff this early but one station worker on the platform advised it was a 'request stop'. I did not know what that meant and have never taken a train with request stops. He said to let the Conductor know.
Somewhat reassured I boarded the train. When the Conductor came thru I told him the same thing that I wanted to get off at Dunrobin Castle. Fortunately a few rows behind was a European who had also made the same request so there were two of us on this carriage which was mostly empty
Then I started wondering if this was a request stop to get off, how do I request the next train to get back on? The Conductor explained that there is a machine that I would use to request the next train to stop
I tried to scan the stations we were stopping at to see if I could see this request stop machine but none of these stations were request stops
The scenery was interesting as we came up the north east coast of Scotland and was mixed with cattle grazing in the wilderness. We were due at Dunrobin at 9.20am.
At Dunrobin the two of us got off. The other person was a French Canadian. I looked and found the Stop Request machine and told him we have to use it to request to get back on the train. He was going back to Inverness so I will wait and see what happens when I return to catch the 12.48 train continuing northbound to Thurso
The machine said it would be live from 20 mins before arrival time to request the next train. So far so good.
2025-05-23