The Scotland trip - time to mull things over

Eureka! Holidays are approved.
I want to book the tickets for the steam train but there are no first class tickets available anymore. Drat and double drat! Should I compromise and book second class? Or should I turn the trip around, go counterclock-wise and check the availability for the train then? 
I really need to reassess the situation, considering that the way the trip is put together now, I will spend more time in Glasgow than in Edinburgh, I get to do Fort William to Mallaig once and I will pay a lot of money for the trips London – Glasgow and Edinburgh – York – London.

Fair enough. Three good reasons to think the planning over. So, I check what happens if I go counterclockwise. Edinburgh first, next Inverness, Dornie, Mallaig, Fort William, Glasgow, London.

It’s 23:45 and way past my bedtime but I am chin-deep in tabbed Chrome pages and the Excel sheet. Why, oh why did I not buy a second monitor yet?

Ok, first class on the Jacobite would be available on the new date.

I could book a first class trip from Mallaig to Fort William, but it would be the additional summer steam train which leaves Mallaig late and arrives in Fort William even later. 
I would have a lot of time to kill in  Mallaig which is a very small town and if the weather is bad - which is always a possibility in Scotland - that important leg of the journey will be pretty much ruined.

I do not like that thought at all.

There is also the normal, earlier, train from Mallaig to Fort William. It would make much more sense to take that one. I could already check out what one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world is like. If the sun is shining, I should be able to marvel at beautiful late afternoon scenery. And the next day, I would be doing the trip on the steam train, relaxed and rested.

Now, this is a thought I can live with!

To get from Mallaig to Glasgow, I could take a fairly late and normal train and arrive rather late in the evening... as in minutes before witching hour late. I am not comfortable with that. I would have an awful lot of time to kill in Mallaig. And I don’t quite fancy walking around Glasgow in the dark. I have heard that it can be quite dodgy.
The alternative is simply too hard to resist. Rather than booking a single first class journey on the Steam train (£46), I can book a return journey (£52). 
Once I am back in Fort William, I will get onto the late train towards Glasgow and stop somewhere en route for the night. After a bit of research, I come across an interesting-looking hotel in Ardlui, on the northern tip of Loch Lomond. The hotel offers rooms with views onto the lake. I am checking the reviews for the hotel and it all sounds pretty decent, but I am not booking it just yet.

I still need to make sure that I have a decent roof over my head in Fort William. I am panicking ever so slightly as I find that the hotels and B&Bs are pretty much booked. The ones which are still available have either just single beds or very mixed reviews. I discard the idea of the single bed options, as they are expensive in relation to the doubles and I dislike single beds, because I am fairly tall and used to doubles. It's my holidays, I do not want to sleep in a cramped place.
After some frantic searching I find a hotel, just one train station away from Fort William which still has 2 doubles left. I am booking one of them as quickly as I can.

It's really time to go to bed now, it is almost 1:30 in the morning and I have to go to work tomorrow.