The Long Curve

The Glenfinnan Viaduct curves away through the glen, its twenty-one concrete arches carrying the West Highland Line high above the valley floor near the head of Loch Shiel. A heavy, bruised sky sat over the Highlands the afternoon I stood beneath it, the surrounding hillsides gone gold and rust with late-season grass. Built at the turn of the last century by Robert McAlpine, the man they called Concrete Bob, the viaduct is known to many now from the Harry Potter films, where the Hogwarts Express crosses it. I had come through this country on a Highlands trip and worked the structure from below, close enough to read the water stains down the piers and the long sweep of the arches into the distance. I merged several exposures to hold both the dark sky and the lit stone. No train came while I was there, and the silence suited it.