Once the Callander & Oban Railway (C&O) had reached the west coast port in 1880, there followed decades of jockeying for position between different companies – notably the C&O and the West Highland Railway – which were keen to take a railway to Fort William and indeed up the Great Glen to Inverness.
The C&O promised a railway from Connel Ferry, on the Oban line, to Ballachulish – then bridging Loch Leven to reach Fort William from the south. This proposal lost out to the West Highland's scheme to approach Fort William via Rannoch Moor and Glen Spean, but when the rival Highland Railway (based in Inverness) and North British Railway (operator of the West Highland Line) agreed not to promote any railway in the Great Glen for ten years, the C&O scheme was revived in a different guise. Its proposed line from Connel Ferry to Ballachulish, then bridging Loch Leven to reach Fort William, was opposed by a proposed West Highland extension south from Fort William (also bridging Loch Leven). However, ‘the North British encountered opposition at Fort William, where a railway extension would create a further barrier at the lochside [the existing railway from Glasgow cut off much of the town from Loch Linnhe]. Hostility was also encountered at Ballachulish where there was an objection to the bridge from shipping interests2.
Two Acts of Parliament were passed on 7th August 1896 to allow for a West Highland branch from Fort William to the north side of Loch Leven opposite Ballachulish and a C&O branch to Ballachulish – but the bridge was not sanctioned and the line south from Fort William was never built3. The 27¾-mile Ballachulish branch began operations in 1903, as the last railway to be built in the Highlands. Perhaps surprisingly, though, the idea of a railway bridging Loch Leven would resurface 60 years later, as we shall see.
The Ballachulish–Oban train service revolutionised transport in the area, where journeys had previously been very slow via a mix of steamer/ferry/circuitous road routes along the heavily indented coastline. The opening in 1907 of the hydro-electricpowered aluminium smelter at nearby Kinlochleven substantially boosted freight traffic at Ballachulish, with trains bringing in the alumina raw material and taking out the finished product. However, the new main road built through Glencoe in the early 1930s offered an easier and more direct passenger route to the south, adding to the general trend of rail services being undermined by the rise of the car, bus and lorry.
The writing seemednot everyone assumed that meant the end of the railway through Benderloch and Appin . . .
