Travelling by bus from Dunblane to Auchterarder earlier in the year (March 2024) had given me the idea for a great vantage point to see and photograph trains from the west side of the A9 trunk road at the point east of Blackford where it crosses the railway line near the Highland Spring bottling plant.
I had subsequently seen various pictures taken from this spot and realised that it offered a fine panoramic location at which to photograph trains passing two of the remaining trio of semaphore signals controlled by the LMS 1933-vintage signal box, which stands next to a level crossing at the north end of the village.
Like Auchterarder and nearby Greenloaning, Blackford station closed as long ago as June 1956, yet despite the loss of their stations, each of this trio – located on the busy route between Stirling and Perth – retains a signal box and mechanical signalling.
While there is precious little remaining freight traffic on the routes north towards Aberdeen and Inverness, a mainstay of passenger services between Glasgow Queen Street and Aberdeen is the ScotRail fleet of Inter7City four and five coach HST sets, which will almost certainly be the last HST sets to operate on the British rail network.
An announcement that the Scottish Government was launching a process to procure a replacement fleet of what will presumably be bi-mode trains means the HSTs are now unlikely to last until 2030, although they are likely remain in service for longer than the much smaller fleet of GWR Castle HST sets as the latter get replaced by Class 175 units.
Getting to Blackford from the Scottish capital on a Saturday (14 September 2024) meant an hour-long train trip to Dunblane then a 15-minute bus ride on a Docherty’s Midland Coaches service 20 (fare £3.80 return) to a bus turning circle close to the level crossing, from where it is an easy 20-minute walk out of town along the old main road (now B8081) then back along a wide grass verge at the side of the A9 to the railway bridge.
What was rather depressing about my visit to Blackford was the level of cancelled trains, due to driver shortage and the current emergency timetable being operated by ScotRail. Of the 10 scheduled passenger trains that should have passed Blackford during the time I was there half had been cancelled.But of the five trains that did pass during the hour I spent on the rather noisy A9 over-bridge, three were formed by Inter7City HSTs, all of which were the more recent five car formations.
One sad loss at Blackford since my first visit some years ago has been a down home signal on a lattice post, but on the positive there is the new Highland Spring freight terminal just west of the level crossing and a new footbridge beyond the up section signal and depot entrance that looks worth a return visit.
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