TUNNEL UNDER GRAMPIANS

Evening Star, Issue 20019, 9 November 1928, Page 1

TUNNEL UNDER GRAMPIANS

HUGE ENGINEERING TASK Prince Charlie, whose country wc cuter from Fort William, tho capital of tho North-western Highlands, might have expressed considerable alarm if ho could witness the great undertaking in progress on the side of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Great Britain (writes the Fort William correspondent of the • Sunday Times’). At night time from Loch Eil tho slope is brilliantly illuminated, for night and day shifts of engineers, excavators, and blasters arc constructing a fifteen-mile water tunnel through a corner of Ben Nevis and under tho Grampians to Loch Treig. The object is to utilise the loch as a great reservoir for collecting the water on tho mountains and harnessing it _ for power in the aluminium works in Fort William. If necessary —for their full development—tho scheme will include tho division of other streams in the district.

The undertaking, which excites the wonder and interest of visitors to the Western Highlands, is one of the most important in Great Britain, and the expenditure will probably not be less than £5,000,000. Its productive capacity in electrical power is estimated at 650 million units, per year. Already the aluminium works arc operating, and a largo staff of men find employment there. For their accommodation houses have been erected, and for general convenience of tho undertaking a long railway pier was constructed from the aluminium factory to a deep portion of Loch Linnho at which steam vessels can load and unload. -The cost of the pier was, I am informed, £250,000. When the whole is complete, including the fifteen-mile tunnel, immense dams, and enormous pipe lines, these aluminium works will _ possess such electrical power that its general capacity will not Ire equalled in Great Britain.

Fort William residents do not seem alarmed that tho beauty of the Highlands will be spoiled by these surprising projects. So far as the town is concerned, these have already contributed to its prosperity by the large sum paid in wages to the workmen.