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Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 578152
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/578152
Glenlee Tunnel connects Clatteringshaws reservoir to Glenlee power station. Water is not drawn off from the
reservoir at the dam, but at the eastern side about 112 miles north of it. The tunnel has a total length of 3.6 miles and a flattened circle cross-section of 11 ft equivalent diameter.
It is concrete lined throughout and over the greater part of its length is constructed on a gradient of 1 in 350, the last 3600 ft being on a gradient of 1 in 100. At about its midpoint the tunnel passes under the Craigshinnie Burn, which is intercepted and its water led into the tunnel through one of the vertical driving shafts adapted for the purpose. There is a surge shaft on the tunnel close to the downstream portal at Glenlee.
A single steel pipe of maximum diameter 9 ft 6 in. and 1600 ft long joins the tunnel portal to the power station.
The main contractor for the tunnel construction was A. M. Carmichael and for the steel pipeline, Sir Wm. Arrol & Co. Ltd.
Since the 1970s the whole scheme has been controlled from Glenlee Power Station.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
