The Key to Anchor Lake ✓

26 : The Key to Anchor Lake

Except from chapter 2 of The Key to Anchor Lake by Mary S Nesbitt – "A Brief Introduction to the History of Anchor Lake in the 17th – 20th Centuries"

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PART THREE

The Events of the 19th Century: 1819 – 1894

By the time the 19th century rolled around, Anchor Lake was recovering from the devastating lasting effects of the fevers and famines that plagued the previous century. Across the world, millions continued to lose their lives to smallpox, but Anchor Lake had suffered its blight and seen off the disease, with no new cases in decades.

Now, at the dawn of the 1800s, industrialisation was awash across Europe, and even this quiet Highland's town was feeling the effects.

The mountain-lined valley in which Anchor Lake sits now homed an impressive system of mines, a dangerous yet vital – and profitable – treasure trove of coal. Three miles from the lake, the town's first factory had opened, a cotton mill powered by the rich water supply around Anchor Lake, from the rivers and streams to the lake itself.

The advent of industry in the area led to a rise in population as workers flocked to Anchor Lake from even more remote areas to work in the mills and the collieries, bringing life to this quiet, rural area. The early 1800s also saw the implementation of a funicular railway up the mountainside, used for transporting goods without necessitating horses or risking the workers. The new system facilitated a quick and easy mechanical ascent up the mountain's steepest side for the shortest route, and it revolutionised the booming industrial trade.

Things were looking up for our small town. Jobs were booming. Life expectancy was up to forty by 1819, a number that many residents surpassed as life here was relatively safe – there was none of the smog and pollution that plagued London and Manchester, and quality of life increased as more money and opportunity came to town.

But this is Anchor Lake, and good fortune cannot last.

In 1819, during a particular busy shift when over three hundred workers were in the cotton mill, a piece of faulty equipment caught fire. The flames spread swiftly, compromising the building's structural integrity, and within thirty minutes of the initial spark, the entire building collapsed. While many workers were able to escape in time, almost a third of the workforce was still inside at the time of the collapse.

Some thirty survivors were pulled from the burning wreckage. The remains of at least seventy bodies were salvaged once white-hot fire had died down to smouldering ash, most of which were unidentifiable after the tragic accident. It was almost a decade before the cotton industry returned to town, and longer still before the fire was distant enough in living memory.

As is the way in Anchor Lake, two and a half decades of middling success passed before tragedy struck once more. This time, in the new age of industrialisation that revolutionised the town, it was the mines that were hit. An small explosion in one of the pits at the base of Ben Iuchair, the largest of the mountains that surround town, caused the collapse of the mining shaft, the only means of exiting the mine for most of the men underground at the time. The rescue mission lasted for over a week, at the end of which, sixty-eight bodies had been recovered. Many had been killed almost instantly by the explosion and the subsequent collapse, though a not insubstantial number were deemed to have perished in the following days, suffocating in the airless pits.

The mining trade limped on in Anchor Lake for another few decades, but production came to an end years before the UK reached its mining peak in 1913. The town was beginning to get a reputation as the place that progress goes to die.

The reputation was not aided by the Anchor Lake Funicular Disaster in 1869. Leading the way in the building of cliff railways in the United Kingdom, a funicular railway was built in 1867, straight up the side of the treacherous Ben Iuchair. The new tramway was lifechanging for workers, for the two years that it was in use.

In 1869, a tram carrying several tons coal from the peak of Ben Iuchair, the site of a mountaintop removal mining operation, experienced a mechanical failure at the top of the railroad. At almost a mile high, around 1,450 metres above the town, there was nothing workers could do to stop the plummeting cart.

Sixteen residents lost their lives that day, only four of whom worked for the funicular railroad. The tramway was shut down indefinitely, and after briefly reopening several years later only to experience a similar – but not fatal – accident, it was terminated for good.

The line is still visible today, on the southwest facing side of the mountain, but the tracks have been out of use for over a century.

It isn't the only time rails have failed our town.

Almost one hundred and fifty years ago, at the advent of Scottish railroads, this town had better rail links than it has now. The tracks have since become disused, abandoned, overgrown. Where the library now stands, there was once a bridge that crossed through the north end of town and the tracks continued around the southern and western edges of the lake.

Freight trains carrying goods from Glasgow to Inverness would serve the west coast too, and the outskirts of the Trossachs National Park. This was a boon to the town, providing vital resources without the need for extensive travel, and once a week a passenger train would made the 70-mile journey between Anchor Lake and Inverness.

Not all of the trains would stop in this quiet town, however. A bell would sound to alert residents to a non-stop steam train coming through. It was one of these such trains that took the bend approaching town too fast, on a weak section of track. The engine hopped the tracks and derailed, carrying the rest of the twelve cars with it when it crashed through the wall of the bridge and plummeted into the town.

On an ordinary day, there likely would have been few people outside. But it was Beltane, 1894 – the first of May, and the day of the annual Anchor Lake Beltane Fete, when the townspeople celebrated the festival of spring by shutting down the high street to gather and feast. 1894 marked the last year that Beltane was celebrated in Anchor Lake.

After hearing the bell announcing a non-stop train, many residents gathered to watch the steam train – still a novelty, especially for the town's children – as it passed over the bridge.

Nobody could have predicted the carnage that ensued. Children waiting to wave at a train screamed when it barrelled towards them; parents dove to protect their families; people ran to escape the unpredictable path of a runaway train gouging a crevice through the centre of Anchor Lake. The engine burned as it fell, carving through the town hall and coming to a sizzling stop in the lake.

It left 52 dead in its wake.

Given the devastation caused by the crash, it's a miracle there weren't more deaths. Half of the town was destroyed and several buildings were ruined, setting the town back decades with the work now needed to repair the fractured community.

By the end of this cursed century, life expectancy had risen again, with the average woman living to see the age of fifty – many exceeded this, the figures skewed by still-high infant mortality rates – and the town's population was at its peak, despite its economic and industrial disasters. There was a whole new generation of hopeful believers, those who thought that it couldn't get any worse.

Surely, the 20th century would turn it all around.

But we all know how it ends. 

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