‘Nutty neighbours’ force Britain’s most remote train station off the tracks

Nobody knows why the Victorians built Altnabreac station, Britain’s most remote railway station.

Opened in 1874, it is ten miles from the nearest road and serves six homes surrounded by peat bogs up to 30ft deep. Fewer than 300 passengers every year use its one grassy platform in the heart of the bleak but stunning Caithness in the Highlands.

Or they did until last week, when ScotRail, the train operator, quietly announced that it was suspending services to Altnabreac for reasons every bit as mysterious as the station’s origins. The firm has refused to elaborate on why the station is closing. It was facing, it hinted, problems with “access”.

Darren Bruce, 39, a businessman and Caithness resident, blames a couple known as the “nutty neighbours”,