Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands
Date 2007
Event ID 934241
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/934241
Loch nan Uamh Viaduct
(Institute Civil Engineers Historic Engineering Works no. HEW 0021/02)
The scenic location of this viaduct, at the foot of a rocky mountainside and bridging an inlet to the sea, has been described as Wagnerian. It has eight concrete arches of the standard West Highland Railway span of 50 ft arranged in two four-arch groups on either side of a 50 ft wide central pier. The reason for this unusual arrangement in preference to the more obvious and attractive arrangement of nine arches is not known.
In 2000, Professor Paxton and Radar World, commissioned by Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd, developed an innovative radar imaging technique which penetrated the 9 ft thick walls of this pier into its infilled cavity and identified the vertically positioned remains of a McAlpine horse and cart (behind the white spot in the view) which had accidentally fallen into the cavity a century earlier.
R Paxton and J Shipway, 2007.
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
