PRIVATE STATIONS AND WAITING ROOMS ON THE HIGHLAND RAILWAY

Why would anyone feel the need for a private station or waiting room? Was it a fashion for the upper classes or a need to be separate from people? All this might seem rather strange to us in the twenty-first century. However, in one way or another separation in some form still exists in the travel industry. On long-distance routes on the railway, there are first class and standard class coaches with more room on first class and extra perks. Some airlines go as far as having three classes – first, business and standard, the first two of which have separate waiting rooms. At many of the larger railway stations there are first class waiting rooms. Then there are the special facilities for Very Important People such as royalty and members of governments.

Although Queen Victoria was at first nervous about rail travel, she was one of the first important persons to use the railway and consequently waiting rooms for her use sprang up at various stations. Ballater, the terminus of the now closed Deeside Railway, was the nearest station to her Scottish castle, Balmoral. Here there was a very grand waiting room, mostly destroyed in a fire in 2015. At Paddington station, first class travellers can enjoy Queen Victoria’s comforts with her old waiting room incorporated into their lounge. Windsor & Eton was another station where there was a waiting room