The Jacobite, the steam train most folk know as the Hogwarts Express, came off the rails at Mallaig on Sunday.
Literally.
On 14 June the 1940s “Black Five” locomotive that hauls it jumped the track at the platform while shunting round for the run back to Fort William, and the West Highland Line sat blocked for the best part of seven hours.
Nobody was hurt (the thing was barely crawling, around 3.45pm), but ScotRail still had to cancel three of its own services and shove passengers onto replacement buses.
Normal service was back by Monday morning, so this isn’t a disaster. It’s just the latest knock in what’s been a rough few weeks for Scotland’s most photographed train.
And if you’ve got a ticket booked this summer, you’ll want to know what’s actually going on.
From maroon to blue, and the “Primark” jibe
The rumor that started all this chatter was true, with one catch: it’s the carriages that changed color, not the engine.
The classic maroon Mark 1 coaches, the ones you recognize from the films, still run on the morning departure out of Fort William. But on some services, West Coast Railways (the operator) has been coupling up blue-and-grey ex-Inter-City “Mark 2” carriages instead. Old British Rail commuter stock. On the Hogwarts Express.
Fans were not amused. The campaign group Friends of the West Highland Lines summed it up better than I could, comparing it to “seeing a Marks & Spencer store from the pavement and going in and finding it’s Primark.” Ouch.
The sore point is that the Jacobite’s own brochure still promises carriages “similar to those used in the Harry Potter films,” and the photos are all maroon. So you can see why folk who’d booked the afternoon train felt a bit short-changed.
West Coast Railways isn’t apologizing, mind.
Commercial manager James Shuttleworth pushed back hard: “We do not differentiate between ‘heritage’ liveries. Blue/grey was last applied to service stock by British Rail in the 1980s. It is therefore a heritage livery.”
A heritage livery!
Technically he’s not wrong. Whether the average tourist who booked this for the Harry Potter photo cares about 1980s British Rail paint schemes… well, that’s a different question.
The real reason: a door-lock row with the ORR
None of this is really about paint. It’s about doors.
The rail regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), has been enforcing a rule, roughly 27 years on the books now, that says carriages need central door locking.
The Jacobite’s lovely old heritage coaches don’t have it.
That standoff is why the 2026 season started two whole months late, on 1 June, with the full seven-day timetable only kicking in from 10 June.
West Coast Railways has now agreed to fit central door locking across its Mark 1 fleet, and says it’s going back to the traditional maroon stock after, in its words, “valuable feedback from our passengers.”
Good. That’s the right call.
But the work is still ongoing, which is exactly why those blue Mark 2s have kept turning up on some afternoon runs this season. You can’t magic a door-locking system onto a 70-year-old carriage overnight.
Booked a seat this summer? Read this first
Right, the practical bit. The Jacobite is running, it crosses the Glenfinnan Viaduct every day it operates, and that view alone is worth the fare. I’d still go in a heartbeat. Just go in with your eyes open:
- Want the maroon carriages? Book the morning service. That’s where the classic Harry Potter coaches run.
- On an afternoon departure? You might get the blue-and-grey Mark 2s. Grand for the scenery, less so for the Instagram shot you came for.
- Build in some slack. A delayed start and now a derailment in one season tells you all you need to know. Check your service is running before you set off, and don’t pin a tight connection on it.
The Jacobite has survived safety rows, cancellations, and now a wee tumble off the tracks at Mallaig, and it’s still steaming across that viaduct every morning.
The magic hasn’t gone anywhere.
But for a train that sells itself on nostalgia and a postcard-perfect look, 2026 has been a bumpy ride. Book the morning train, cross your fingers for the weather, and you’ll be fine.
