The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
The power plant built in a mountain’s heart
Hidden deep within the iconic mountain Ben Cruachan on the shores of Loch Awe is Cruachan Power Station – opened 55 years ago by the Queen.
At 3,695 ft, the Argyll peak between Loch Awe and Glen Etive is among Scotland’s most famous.
Work to construct the hydroelectricity base started in the summer of 1959 and in 1960, explosives experts, known as “tunnel tigers”, began blasting into the sides of the mountain.
The men used handheld air drills to bore holes in the solid granite, which were then packed with gelignite and detonated.
On October 15 1965, Cruachan Power Station – housed inside the hollowedout mountain – was officially opened by the Queen.
Even Her Majesty, who had arrived on the royal train from Balmoral, was blown away by the sheer magnetism and scale of the place.
As she stepped off the train at nearby Dalmally, a rainbow appeared over Ben Cruachan, as if to order.
A pull of the lever by the Queen and the great machines began to turn, generating power for hundreds of thousands of homes.
It was a breath- taking concept – an underground power station carved into the very heart of a mountain – and the first reversible pumped storage hydro system on such a scale to be built anywhere in the world.
Twenty miles south of Oban, Cruachan’s massive, man-made cavern sits one kilometre inside the mountain.
At 118ft high and nearly 300ft long, the machine hall is the size of a football pitch and tall enough to accommodate the Tower of London.
Today that cavern is home to four generators powered by water from a reservoir and Loch Awe.
It works like an enormous rechargeable battery, temporarily storing energy by managing water resources between a reservoir in the Argyll hills and Loch Awe.
Using its reversible turbines, the station pumps water from the loch to fill the upper reservoir at times when demand for electricity is low.
When demand increases, the stored water can be released through the plant’s turbines to generate power quickly and reliably.
Ian Kinnaird, head of hydro for its owner Drax, said: “When the Queen pulled the lever to send water flowing to Cruachan’s turbines on its opening day 55 years ago, it marked not only the start of the station’s operating story, but the end of many years of construction.
“Cruachan is an engineering marvel carved out of Argyll’ s granite bedrock.”
The work to construct the power station was physically demanding and at times, incredibly dangerous.
Tragically, there was a significant human cost for the project with 15 men, many of them young, losing their lives during construction.
“We have never forgotten the sacrifice those men made to build Cruachan,” said Mr Kinnaird.
“Last year Drax commissioned a new commemorative tar tan with 15 dark blue threads in memory of those who tragically died.”
The 4,000-strong workforce drilled, blasted and cleared the rocks from inside the mountain, removing some 220,000 cubic metres of rubble over a six-year period.
The work was physically exhausting and the environment dark and dangerous.
The workers came from a range of background and cultures, attracted to Cruachan’s huge ambition and generous pay.
Polish and Irish labourers worked alongside Scots, as well as Europeans, displaced by the Second World War, and even workers from as far as Asia.
The men would work long shifts – sometimes up to 18 hours – seven days a week.
Some, desperate to boost their incomes, chose to do 36-hour shifts, which they termed “ghosters”.
Those who witnessed Cruachan during construction say the dirt, noise and scale of carving out its innards felt like stepping into “Dante’s inferno”.
One labour er, who started at Cruachan just after his 18 th birthday, recalled: “I was in for a shock when I went down there.
“The heat, the smoke – you couldn’t see your hands in front of you. It was like stepping into the jaws of hell.”