Corrour was built between 1893 and 1894 as a passing place on the long section of single track between Rannoch and Tulloch. The original plan called it Luibruaridh, after the nearest habitation on the old drove road between Rannoch and Spean Bridge. But from its opening on 7 August 1894 by the North British Railway, its small island platform was used as a station, and the name Corrour stuck -- borrowed from Corrour Lodge, then located five miles to the southeast. In the early days, so much estate business passed through that the railway employed an extra clerkess during grouse season. Theoretically a private station for the Corrour Estate, it served the public from the start, despite not appearing in public timetables until September 1934. It even qualified as a post town, with a sub post office from 1896 and a telegraph office from 1898.

Loch Ossian lies a mile northeast, with a youth hostel at its head. Ben Alder, one of Scotland's remotest Munros, is a day's walk to the east. In 1897, the estate built a new lodge at the foot of the loch, but with no road access, everything -- including vehicles -- had to arrive by rail. The estate ran a small steamer on the loch to connect lodge and station. A private road from the A86 was not built until 1972. In 2013, Historic Scotland listed the disused signalbox as Category C, and after refurbishment by Network Rail and the Railway Heritage Trust, the estate opened three guest rooms inside it in 2016. The station gained wider fame when it appeared in Trainspotting -- the scene where the characters arrive to find, as Renton puts it, nature -- and again when the route south across Rannoch Moor was used to film a Harry Potter sequence. You can still arrive by sleeper from London Euston, step off the train into a landscape that has barely changed since the last ice age, and have breakfast in a converted signal box. The nearest road, remember, is ten miles away.