TUNNELLING BEN NEVIS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 15 May 1925, Page 2

TUNNELLING BEN NEVIS.

GREAT ENGINEERING SCHEME

“A. oreat engineering scheine, the mere whisper of whiph might well cause to turn in their graves the hones of the Highland chiefs and clansmen who defeated' Argyll at jnverlochy and followed Prince Charlie to the Cage on Ben Alder, has gof so far into piac tical shape that a contract has beep closed for the construction or wbaf is called ‘a tunnel under Ben Nevis, at a cost of a million and three-quarters sterling,” says the Scotsman. “The proposed tunnel, 15 males m length and 16 feet in diameter which is' to convey the surplus flow of Loch Treio- and Look L.aiggan to the power works of the North British Aluminium Company near Fort William, will 1 .. as one might gather from Sassenach comments and headlines, be borec. under the ‘top storey of our nighest mountain.’ “It would be more correct to say that the conduit will convey the powef-jgiwiug current drawn from the upper waters of the 'Spean by a short cut under the great knees which Ben Nevis stretches towards the north and e,a,st, the depth below the surface level be in" nowhere more than 2000 feet, or le.ss Than half the height of the- raoiin- * “'lire .scheme is one; that command's marked attention, from the aesthetic and popular, as well as from, the en"i nee ring and industrial, points of view, and not, only those concerned in the production of aluminium and in the local use and distribution- of eleobrioal power, hut natives and tourists, salmon fishers and distillers and the general public have a right to hold their own opinions concerning it. “Notice is claimed by the ‘Ben Nevis Tunnel,’ in the first place, because it is perhaps the greatest and boldest engineering scheme-of its kind that has been undertaken on this side of the Atlantic, and because it is expected to afford employment on and under the Loehabar hills to no fewer than 2500 skilled and unskilled workmen during the coining summer. “But they villi leave behind permanent fruits, of their labour, both under ground and over ground—not only in new evidence given of the dominance of man over nature, but also in the new powers left in man’s command.’’