A Day to Remember

The Highlands had been hit by freak weather conditions since the start of February, but nobody expected the events of 7th February, 1989.

The town had been put on flood alert because of the torrential downpours. The Ness riverbanks had burst. The street below the castle was flooded and the Ness Bank Church had to be protected with sand bags. All footbridges across the Ness were closed in case the water knocked them over. The river was carrying eight times its normal amount of water. The force of the river was tremendous.

About an hour and a half after the Wick train crossed the Ness Viaduct, a harbour worker called the Railway Signalling office and said the bridge seemed to be shaking. The people in the office thought he was imagining things but told the engineers anyway. The engineers, one of them my dad, went to the bridge to check. When they arrived, everything seemed fine, but seconds later the middle section of the bridge collapsed into the River Ness, right in front of their eyes. Later on, another section fell. All that was left of the Viaduct was the track and signalling cables, dangling above the water.

As a result, a big operation was undertaken to get the bridge rebuilt and keep the passengers moving. The bridge, which had been standing for 127 years, had finally fallen. It was discovered that the freak weather, and scour from the riverbed, caused it to collapse. There were 25,000 cubic metres of rubble to be shifted to make a channel for the ships again.

Without the bridge, there were no trains in the north to keep services moving. This meant another massive operation by Scotrail to move four or five trains to the north to keep services moving.

In the end, it all came down to Scotrail putting the customer first, no matter what happened.

Kevin
2C
Inverness Royal Academy