Working on the dam at Lairg

Date Added: 21 November 2014 Year: 1998 Institution Name: dnhhl Cat No: ◀ | 2014_035_06 | ▶ Picture No: 12114

Extract from Am Bratach of July 1998 with monochrome photograph of a group of men working on the dam at Lairg. The inscription below the photograph reads 'recognise any faces?'

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The building of the Shin Hydro-Electric Power scheme began in 1954 and was completed in 1959 and the employment it provided was very welcome to Embo people. Many men from Embo were employed in the building of the 'Lairg Scheme' or the 'Scheme' as it was mostly called. Some of the men in the photograph are familiar to me but I cannot put names to them.
The web site: www.discoversutherland.co.uk/lairg_power.php gives the following interesting information on the scheme and also has a couple of interesting photographs of the dam wall and buildings connected with it.

"The 1950s saw a number of hydro-electric power schemes built throughout the Highlands. The most northerly is the Shin Hydro-Electric Power scheme, producing 38 megawatts of power. Construction began in 1954 and the scheme was completed and generating power by 1959. Loch Shin - already a large loch - was dammed to provide a reservoir and the level of the water was raised by 11 metres. There are a number of power stations in the scheme. The smallest is the half megawatt station of Duchally at the head of Glen Cassley. Water from here then travels through a two and a half mile long tunnel to Cassley Power Station on the western shore of Loch Shin. This station generates ten megawatts. The Loch Shin Dam at Lairg contains another, smaller, generating station producing about three and a half megawatts. The main station is the Shin Power Station at Inveran, about six miles south of Lairg, which has an output of twenty four megawatts. This station takes its water directly from Loch Shin through a long tunnel."
Comment left on 04 December 2014 at 07:06 by Kenneth Mackay Many thanks for this background information. Administrator

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