Hi all

I’m doing the BD in early May with a friend.

We’ve booked the train from Glasgow to Inverness, including bike spaces.

I found this thread last night which got me concerned about getting our bikes on the train.

Has anyone used the service recently with their bikes and if you have, how was it?

Thanks

Phone Scotrail and book the bikes on. You should be ok going from Glasgow to Inverness, it’s a bit more challenging booking from Inverness south as they tend to have more cyclists ending routes in Inverness.

Thanks – I booked bike places when I booked the train tickets.

The thread above gives the impression that despite having a booking there might not be sufficient space on the train for our bikes. Just trying to understand if that’s likely to be an issue?

despite hoping to, I’ve not done it since my post on that thread. I don’t think the trains have changed though. Gravel bike probably fit easier than mtbs (I was in an MTB). You’ll probably manage to squeeze them in but be ready to pull wheels off and have Allen keys handy for spinning bars etc if needs be.

Thanks Oblongbob – we’re on gravel bikes so fingers crossed

There are two storage areas. The first are at the door and won’t fit much, the space is designed to hang your bike vertically and look a bit like a cupboard, they seem to have brackets for two bikes. Inside the actual carriage there is much more space, probably enough for four bikes, this is where we put our bikes last year.

That makes sense EdwardH – the online booking was showing 6 bike spaces.

I think it depends on the train. The one I got didn’t have the other section, just the cupboard with hangers for 3 bikes.

We’ve had a couple of trains with unbooked bikes in the spaces.. We just squeezed on anyway.

We had one guard who would not let us on. Next train was empty of bikes.

This all on the 125’s.

Don’t forget the train starts at Glasgow. So if you are ready to go through the barriers as soon as it gets there, maybe 10 minutes before departure, you can hopefully avoid being blocked by unbooked bikes. Plus there is a better chance of getting unbooked bikes removed then than at an intermediate station with time pressures.

I have never failed to get a booked bike on at Glasgow Queen St. I wouldn’t be worrying.

,

We’re starting at Glasgow so we’ll be sure to get there in good time!

We used the trains at the end of March and did exactly what IRC did, no issues.

There were plenty of unbooked bikes trying to get on though.

I picked up the tickets yesterday, which included tickets to attach to the bikes. I hope these tickets will fend off the unbooked bikes! 😀

Every 125 that I’ve been on in recent times has had the new, additional upgrade to add space for 4 in a big open gap where seats have been removed. That’s in addition to the 2 vertical spaces in the cupboard and in reality, this extra space will easily take 6 bikes.  There’s a telltale big green stripe painted on eh outside of those carriages.

Yeah, getting on at the starting station you’ll be fine. You can then watch all the people with bookings get turned away at the stations along the way, ruining their plans, which is an unfortunately common occurrence on ScotRail.

There’s some sort of problem on the line around Broxburn IIRC. No idea of you can get bikes on the replacement busses🤷

Just finished the Badger on Wednesday.  6 bikes is a bit of a squeeze . 4 of us on at Glasgow  and another 2 got on at Stirling.  Those 2 were huge e bikes with panniers.  They had to stand with them til they got off at aviemore

There’s a thread on the CyclingUK about getting back from JoG – apparently Scotrail have no plans to expand the bike carriages beyond the WHL which seems very disappointing if there’s demand.

I have noticed the Inverness train generally gets quieter as you get further north, usually past Perth and vice versa. The guards are usually very helpful. The early trains are normally very quiet especially at weekends.

I reckon I could jump on an early Saturday train heading south and get on with my bike with no reservation from Aviemore to Perth or Blair Atholl and cycle home.

I am planning on doing the Badger route south to north (I like a tailwind). I will make sure I have a bike reservation though as I don’t want to steal someone else’s reserved bike space.

When I booked last year, the person on the phone said that the reason you can’t book the bike spaces as early as the train ticket was because they don’t know what trains they’re using as apparently different trains have a different number of bike spaces.

If you’ve got bike spaces booked on a specific train I think you’ll be good.