Западная высокогорная железная дорога Шотландии: История и строительство.

Former railway company in Scotland
the historical railway company

The West Highland Railway was a railway company that constructed a railway line from Craigendoran (on the River Clyde west of Glasgow, Scotland) to Fort William and Mallaig. The line was built through remote and difficult terrain in two stages: the section from Craigendoran to Fort William opened in 1894, with a short extension to Banavie on the Caledonian Canal opening in 1895. It had originally been intended to extend to Roshven, to give good access to sea going fishery vessels, but the end point was altered to Mallaig, and this section opened in 1901. The Mallaig Extension was notable for the extensive use of mass concrete in making structures for the line; at the time this was a considerable novelty. The line never made a profit, and relied on government financial support, which was given (amid much controversy) to improve the depressed economic conditions of the region. It was worked by the North British Railway, which later took the company over. Except for a short stub at Banavie the entire line remains in use, and it is considered to be one of the most scenic railway lines in Britain.

Prior to the nineteenth century the western highlands of Scotland formed a wild tract of land, with mountainous terrain threaded by deep river valleys. The soil was generally poor and not conducive to productive agriculture, and land transport was poor. After the Jacobite rising of 1715 military roads were constructed for the purpose of military control, but these were limited to the area from Crieff to south of the Great Glen. The most efficient transport medium was coastal shipping. Railways became a practicable means of transport around the end of the eighteenth century especially in mineral districts, in many cases at first as short distance adjuncts to waterways; the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway of 1826 is notable in the development in Scotland. In 1842 the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway opened, showing the way for inter urban general purpose railways, and the easing of the money market in the following years led to a frenzy of promotion of railways, in which a huge number of schemes were put forward, not all of them viable.

The climax of this was in 1845, the year in which the Caledonian Railway obtained its Act of Parliament, authorising the creation of capital of £1.5 million to build a railway from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Carlisle. Other Scottish trunk railways were authorised in the same year, and this encouraged the promotion of increasingly wild schemes intended to be submitted to Parliament in the following session. The West Highlands of Scotland were not omitted from the schemes proposed. Prospectuses were issued for the Scottish Western Railway and the Scottish North Western Railway, as well as the Scottish Grand Junction Railway and others. Some of the prospectuses told of abundant income and easy construction through imaginary gently rolling land. One line at least admitted the mountainous character of the area but proposed the use of the atmospheric system to overcome the difficulty. The tightness of money in 1846 and the following years put paid to all the West Highland schemes. As other railways were opened and operating, there remained a large area on the map of Scotland not served by any, and branch lines from existing trunk lines began to be considered. In 1870 the first section of the Callander and Oban Railway was opened, extending a local branch line, and this railway, a subsidiary of the Caledonian Railway, opened throughout to Oban in 1880. Also in 1870 the main part of the Dingwall and Skye Railway opened, as far as Stromeferry. Thus two west coast locations were reached by penetrating branches from the centre. appointed in March 1883, examined the plight of smallholders in the Highlands, and their investigation showed that above all transport was a pressing need. The G&NWR was not directly established by the government: it was sponsored by financial interests in London, and by the North British Railway (NBR). The NBR was a bitter competitor of the Caledonian Railway (CR) and the CR regarded the western side of Scotland as its own preserve, so that the NBR interest in the new line automatically led to opposition. The Highland Railway and David MacBrayne Ltd, a coastal steamer operator, were both effective monopolies on their respective businesses and naturally opposed the G&NWR. The bill came before Parliament in the 1883 session. This event was used in the parliamentary hearings for the authorisation of the line to illustrate the remoteness of the proposed route. The projections on the earnings of the line were simply based on the receipts of the Callander and Oban line, grossed up for the longer mileage.

The first sod was dug on 23 October 1889 and the contractor for the construction, Lucas and Aird, set about assembling the workforce for the construction. The exceptional remoteness of the area, and the scarcity of even basic roadways posed especial difficulties. The engineers were Formans and McCall. In August 1891 a major dispute arose between the contractors and the railway company, over the price to be paid for removing spoil; the contractor wanted a higher payment for the material containing boulders. The dispute went to Dumbarton Sheriff Court, where the case was found in favour of the railway company, but by now the workforce was largely dispersed. A negotiated settlement brought Lucas and Aird back to the site and work resumed in October 1891. There was still much to do, in particular the crossing of the boggy section of Rannoch Moor which had not yet been started, By the summer of 1893 the railway company was running out of capital, and it appeared that the work must cease, but one of the directors, Mr Renton, gave part of his personal fortune to save the scheme. (after some earlier visits) and on 7 August authority to open the line to passenger operation was received. Maximum speed was to be limited to 25 mph. Trains started running on that day, although a formal opening was arranged for Saturday 11 August by the wife of the chairman, William Hay, 10th Marquess of Tweeddale. The line ran from Craigendoran Junction to Fort William, with fifteen stations formed in the style of Swiss chalets. The line was single, with Saxby and Farmer tablet apparatus. There were three passenger trains each way, the first down and last up train conveying a through coach for Kings Cross via Edinburgh; one goods train ran each way daily. On 1 November 1894 the passenger service was reduced to two trains each way, the "winter" timetable. The rival Caledonian Railway introduced a London to Fort William service via Oban, with a steamer connection from there to Fort William, with throughout timings not far off the West Highland times. An attempt was made by the West Highland to operate a residential service from Arrochar to Craigendoran (three return journeys daily and 4 on Saturdays from 1959), there connecting with North British Railway trains to Glasgow, but the difficult location of the WHR stations, some distance from the communities they purported to serve, made this unattractive for daily travel. An attempt to generate goods traffic from Greenock (via steamer to Craigendoran) to Fort William was also unsuccessful because of a price disadvantage compared to throughout steamer transits. Rannoch station was at this time remote from public roads: the West Highland built a road eastward from the station to Loch Rannoch. (The road is now part of the B846 road. Kinlochleven was also inaccessible by public road at this time.) From 29 December 1894 through to 7 February 1895 blizzards of exceptional severity struck the area of the line, and many trains became marooned, as the line was blocked. Improved snow defences were subsequently erected, including the Cruach Rock snowshed. It was joined from late 1965 by all Glasgow to Oban trains, re routed following closure of the Dunblane to Crianlarich route initially by a landslide in Glen Ogle but officially from April 1966 as part of the so called Beeching cuts.

With no through trains to Oban and a very limited 'residential' traffic to Garelochhead, the income on which the finances of the line had been based were out of reach. The main line to Fort William opened during the summer season of 1894, but doing so had been expensive, involving excessive construction costs against the contractor's advice in the difficult winters of 1892 3 and 1893 4. Moreover, the Banavie branch would not open until the following year (1895) and total construction costs exceeded £1 million, nearly double the estimate. By now the North British Railway was the banker for the West Highland, but some pretence of independence was retained, to avoid a repudiation of the financial support by the Treasury. The total revenue of the West Highland Railway in 1896 was £45,146. It climbed to £69,626 in 1899 and eventually to £92,260 in 1901 (92260.0 in 1901 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years), but it was always heavily loss making; the losses were made up by the NBR. (1206463.0 in 1902 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years).

Although on salt water, Fort William was too far from the open sea to be useful as a fishing base, and the idea of a westward extension was revived. Loch Nevis was considered an ideal location from the shipping point of view, but the intermediate land would have made railway construction exceptionally difficult, so the West Highland Railway reluctantly settled on Mallaig, less than 40 miles from Fort William. It was clearly unlikely that the extension could be profitable and the NBR (as the only viable private provider of the necessary capital) made it clear that it would only invest if Government subsidy were made available. A Treasury Committee examined the possible railways—not just the Mallaig line—and recommended Government support for the line, although Mallaig "could only be recommended for want of a more favoured position being attainable." The North British Railway had supported the first part of the West Highland Railway for commercial reasons, but it was now concerned that it would be expected to pick up the loss of the Mallaig extension, and it considered a loss to be inevitable. Nonetheless commitments had been given, and on 28 April 1892 the NBR agreed to work the extension of 50% of gross receipts, and that it would continue to support the line when the Government guarantee of 3% on capital over 25 or 30 years expired. but the guarantee bill was thrown out; many MPs objected to a free gift to a railway company. However the scheme, aimed at developing a backward area of the country, had Government support and the Guarantee Bill was submitted to Parliament again in the 1895 and 1896 sessions and eventually it passed, on 14 August 1896. The Treasury guaranteed the shareholders 3% on £260,000 of West Highland Railway (Mallaig Extension) capital and to make a grant of £30,000 towards the £45,000 cost of the pier at Mallaig; rates were also to be held to the level of unimproved land. The contractors were Robert McAlpine and Sons, and the engineers were Simpson and Wilson. Although the section from Banavie to the head of Loch Eil was easy, from there onwards the terrain was very difficult, a problem exacerbated by the remoteness and difficult access. Very hard rock was encountered and away from Loch Eil there was a considerable volume to penetrate. Steam powered drilling equipment was difficult to bring to the locations and keep fuelled, and McAlpine used water turbines to provide compressed air power for drilling. The construction of the line actually cost £540,000 (540000.0 in 1901 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years). Although the rock was hard, it was shattered and fractured, making it unsuitable for conventional masonry construction in bridges and viaducts, and this led McAlpine to use mass concrete to build many bridges; at the time this was a revolutionary form of construction. Borrodale Burn bridge became the world's longest concrete span at 127 feet, and Glenfinnan Viaduct was a huge structure in concrete at 416 yards long with 21 arches.

As time went on, the independence of the West Highland Railway was increasingly seen as a sham; its line was worked by the North British Railway, and its losses as well as any remaining capital works were funded by the NBR. Competing railways — the Highland and the Caledonian — could clearly see that the NBR was in control. In 1902 matters were brought to a head when the North British Railway (General Powers) Act abolished West Highland Railway stock and substituted 3% North British Railway stock. Six years later the North British Railway Confirmation Act, 1908, gave the NBR power to absorb the entire WHR undertaking, and this became effective on 31 December 1908. The West Highland Railway had a book value of £2,370,000. In 1931 the Lochaber power scheme was inaugurated; it required a diversion of nearly 1.5 miles of the line alongside Loch Treig; a dam was built across the northern end and the level of the loch was raised by about 35 feet. The diverted railway is from 78m 100yds to 80m 175yds, and includes a new tunnel 150 yards long. In June 1975 Fort William station was relocated, shortening the line a little, in connection with a road scheme. In 1987 radio electronic token block (RETB) was installed on all of the West Highland Railway system, except for the Fort William station area. RETB enabled safe operation of the long single line sections without signalling staff at stations; the control centre was at Banavie. The points at passing loops at stations were spring operated, and were negotiated at slow speed in the facing direction. To avoid confusion in radio voice exchanges between drivers and the signallers at Banavie, Mallaig Junction was renamed Fort William Junction while Tyndrum Upper station was renamed Upper Tyndrum both from late 1989.

Apart from the last section of the Banavie Branch, and several of the southern stations, the line is still open, being operated by ScotRail as part of the West Highland Line services (which also encompasses services to Oban and Mallaig).