Old Photograph Hydroelectric Dam Tunnel Lochaber Scotland

Old photograph of workers building the Hydroelectric Dam Tunnel in Lochaber, Scotland. This was part of a hydroelectric power generation project constructed in the Lochaber area of the western Scottish Highlands after the First World War. Like its predecessor at Kinlochleven, it was intended to provide electricity for aluminium production, this time at Fort William, a little further north. The scheme was initially designed by engineer Charles Meik but after his death in 1923, the scheme’s realisation was left to William Halcrow, by then a partner in the firm originally founded by Meik’s father Thomas Meik. The scheme harnessed the headwaters of the Rivers Treig and Spean and the flood waters of the River Spey, plus a further eleven small rivers burns along the way. The Laggan Dam contained the flow of the Spean in a reservoir, Loch Laggan. A three mile long tunnel then linked this body of water with another reservoir at Loch Treig contained by the Treig dam. From here, the main tunnel, until 1970 the longest water carrying tunnel in the world, 15 miles long and 15 feet in diameter, was driven around the Ben Nevis massif. From the western mountainside, down five massive steel pipes, the water rushed towards the turbines in the power house at the smelting plant.

All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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