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.
Before the railways 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.John Thomas, The West Highland Railway, David and Charles (Publishers) Limited, Newton Abbot, 1965 revised 1976,
The railway mania
The climax of this was in 1845, the year in which the Caledonian Railway obtained its act of Parliament, the Caledonian Railway Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. clxii), 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.
The Glasgow and North Western Railway There remained considerable tracts of the west Highland area without useful transport routes, and social conditions were identified as being unacceptable. A government commission 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 Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 (49 & 50 Vict. c. 29) established the Crofters' Commission and gave enhanced rights to crofters. This change of mood led to the idea that a railway serving the area was a social need, and in turn this led to the promotion of the Glasgow and North Western Railway. This 167-mile line, costed at £1,526,116, was to reach from Glasgow (Maryhill) to Inverness by way of Loch Lomond, Rannoch Moor, Glen Coe and Fort William. Fort William, although a small town, was the centre of a wide area.John McGregor, The West Highland Railway – Plans Politics and People, John Donald, Edinburgh, 2005, David Ross, The North British Railway: A History, Stenlake Publishing Limited, Catrine, 2014,
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.
The hearings were lengthy, and opposition counsel did not hesitate to pour scorn on Highlandmen who came in support of the line. The undeveloped nature of the area (which the railway was designed to rectify) was shown as a reason to reject the proposed line, and finally on 1 June 1883 the committee threw out the bill. The G&NWR was finished.
The West Highland Railway proposed The establishment of the Crofters' Commission followed this disaster, and social concern at the plight of the West Highland population was not diminished by the failure of the G&NWR scheme. In October 1887 public opinion in Fort William begun to be mobilised when the provost N. B. MacKenzie publicly argued for a Glasgow to Fort William line. Efforts were made to secure the support of the North British Railway and in February 1888 this was given, provided that the government contributed £300,000 to the scheme. The North British guaranteed £150,000 if local subscriptions were inadequate, as well as guaranteeing 4.5% on the shares (by a complicated formula).
At length the idea of a West Highland Railway was developed. This time it would not attempt to reach Inverness, but was to run from Craigendoran, on the North British Railway line to Helensburgh. It would run beside the Gare Loch (instead of the southern part of Loch Lomond) to Ardlui, Crianlarich, Rannoch Moor and Loch Treig to Fort William. A branch was to continue to Lochailort and the south-west to Roshven, a west coast sea port intended to give access to fishing vessels and island steamers.
The truncated route passed over the estate of friendly landowners as far as Fort William, but west of that place matters were more feudal, and the Roshven extension was later abandoned in the face of their opposition.
On 30 January 1889 seven gentlemen, including Robert McAlpine set out to walk from Spean Bridge to Rannoch Lodge, a distance of 40 miles across largely trackless terrain. The purpose was to examine the route, and to discuss the route of the line with Sir Robert Menzies. In extremely poor weather they set off, wearing city clothes, and a series of misjudgements nearly led to catastrophe for them. 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 Highland Railway and the Caledonian Railway both opposed the line in Parliament, to protect their lines to Stromeferry and Oban respectively, but the (52 & 53 Vict. c. cxxxiv) obtained royal assent on 12 August 1889. The Roshven extension was dropped and the authorised line was from Craigendoran to Fort William only. Immediately a further bill was prepared for the 1890 session for certain deviations—one on Rannoch Moor was rejected in Parliament—and for an extension to Banavie Pier. This bill was enacted as the (53 & 54 Vict. c. cxviii).John Thomas and David Turnock, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: Volume 15: North of Scotland, David & Charles (Publishers), Newton Abbot, 1989,
Construction The first sod was dug on 23 October 1889The Story of the West Highland, published by the London and North Eastern Railway, 1944 (written anonymously by George Dow) 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. In fact when the line was completed the total cost was said to be £1.1 million.
Opening The line was finally inspected by Major Marindin of the Board of Trade on 3 August 1894 (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. Opinion had been expressed within the company that a limited opening to Gareloch at first would be preferable, but the politics of securing government support for the Mallaig line meant that no hesitation could be displayed.
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.