Qualla: Loch nan Uamh Viaduct

Loch nan Uamh Viaduct: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gareth James, CC BY-SA 2.0. For a hundred years, a horse stood inside a railway viaduct and nobody knew. The Loch nan Uamh Viaduct carries the West Highland Line across the Allt a' Mhama -- the Mama Burn -- just before it flows into Loch nan Uamh, a sea loch on the coast of Lochaber. Eight concrete arches of fifty-foot span, four on each side of a large central pylon, stride across the burn in a design whose logic has never been fully explained. What was explained, eventually, was why the central pylon was built so much larger than the engineering seemed to require. Something was inside it.

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Image: Gareth James | CC BY-SA 2.0

Loch nan Uamh Viaduct: The Line to the Isles

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M J Richardson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The West Highland Line is one of the great railway journeys of Britain, running from Glasgow through the mountains and along the coast to Mallaig, where ferries connect to the Small Isles and Skye. The line was built in stages during the 1890s and early 1900s, an extraordinary fe...

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Image: M J Richardson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Loch nan Uamh Viaduct: The Search for the Horse

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Norrie Adamson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Local legend had long maintained that a horse fell into the wet concrete of a pier during the construction of one of the West Highland Line's viaducts. The story was specific enough to be believable but vague enough to be unfindable. In 1987, Roland Paxton, a civil engineering hi...

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Image: Norrie Adamson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Loch nan Uamh Viaduct: Concrete and Consequence

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Grant McIntosh Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0. The discovery confirmed a story that had been passed down for a century along the west Highland coast. During construction, a horse and cart had evidently fallen or been trapped in the wet concrete of the central pylon, and the builders -- whether unable or unwilling to retrieve ...

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Image: Grant McIntosh Photography | CC BY-SA 4.0