The Real-Life Hogwarts Express Route in Scotland Is Available to Book...but It's Selling Out Fast

I'm a big fan of trains. I grew up in the Midwest "train watching" with my little brothers, sitting in a straight line by the tracks (sans tickets) and counting down the seconds until the next BNSF freight pulled into the station, to our great delight. There's something inherently magical about rail travel, whether you're a kid waving from the station or a passenger sitting in the caboose.

If you share my enthusiasm and jacked-up appetite for rail minutiae (I blame Thomas the Tank Engine reruns when I was a kid), there are few more majestic places on Earth to catch a ride than Scotland. The Scottish rail scene is the stuff of daydreams, especially in the fall when tree leaves burst into red and the hills of the Highlands fold over themselves for miles and miles. When I visited in October—on an invitation from Visit Scotland and Vacations by Rail, my new best friends—the route wove around lochs (the Scottish Gaelic word for lakes) and castles, ultimately taking me to a *very* special Harry Potter filming location (more on that later).

Let me guess, you wanna do the same? Planners, ready your pencils: Here's how to craft an Outlander-worthy Scottish rail vacation and join the ~100 million passengers who take ScotRail each year.

P.S. The writer received a free stay, meals, and activities while on this trip in order to write this story.

Train

Let's start with why you clicked on this story: the trains! Scotland offers superior train travel options, with lines passing through mountains and sweeping green landscapes where no roads have ever been built. One of the most famous routes is the West Highland Line, which goes from Fort William to Mallaig through the Glenfinnan Viaduct. Why? Because this viaduct is where the Harry Potter movies filmed the Hogwarts Express bridge scene(!!!).

BOOK SCOTRAIL TRAIN TICKETS HERE

If you want your wizard-worthy recreation to be as exact as possible, you can reserve a seat on the stunning Jacobite Steam Train. West Coast Railways (the operators of the Jacobite) actually gave Warner Bro. Studio the steam engine and carriages for the movie series' train scenes, so you can't get a more precise emulation.

Bonus: In the quaint fishing town of Mallaig, located at the end of the route, you can sometimes see the Northern Lights between October and March each year. Dark-sky seaport towns make for amazing stargazing, I've learned.