Funicular is ''Bureaucracy gone mental'

'Bureaucracy gone mental' is the verdict on the Cairngorm Funicular Railway from a hillwalker caught out in bad weather with his two young sons and denied access to the Ptarmigan restaurant, though the situation may change in the future.

Graeme Gordon, 37, the producer of TV series Taggart initially intended to take the new railway to the Ptarmigan with his children - aged eight and four - then continue to the summit plateau on foot, however after being told the railway is a 'closed' system between 1 May-30 November he chose to walk all the way from the car park.

The 'closed' system operates to help to conserve the delicate eco-sytem of the sub-arctic plateau and means that tourists cannot leave the confines of the railway and its stations to trample on innocent flora and slow-moving fauna.

When weather conditions deteriorated, Gordon tried to get into the restaurant building at the Ptarmigan station, but was turned away because he had no ticket, despite offering to buy one at the bottom, and had to walk back down to the car park at Coire Cas.

The access restrictions are widely known to walkers and climbers who cannot use the railway for rapid access to the summit as they could with the old chairlift system, although BBC News quotes Tania Adams, CairnGorm Mountain's marketing and sales director as saying that an application has been made to alter the terms of the funicular's operation to allow walkers who've walked from the car park to use the company's facilities.

It'd be nice to think the motivation behind that was safety or some sort of principle, but something tells us it's more likely to be motivated by the desire to sell more mulled wine, sticky buns and expensive sandwiches...

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