Remnants of Altnacardich POW camp operational 1917 - Lovat Estate
The image and detailed research is by Alasdair Cameron, Black Isle, who with many other people has pieced together old images, written reports and some modern photographs to tell some of the story of the World War I prisoner of war camps, forestry operations and of the light railways on Lovat Estates that carried the timber to the sawmills at Beauly and Bunchrew Station.
This second camp was constructed higher up on Newtonhill area close to The Aird and was the second base for German prisoners of war who worked in the forests and delivered timber to Bunchrew Railway Station and to the Railway Station at Inchberry, Lentran area.
It seems that this camp had a corps of skilled woodsmen and engineers who just wished to get on with doing the work and lived in conditions of fairly relaxed security. The rail route from the forest has not been surveyed in detail but it did involve a significant challenge in that Bunchrew Station was at 750 feet lower elevation and three miles distant. In common with wood operations in other parts of Scotland, where slopes existed, light rail systems were often employed to convey timber to a mobile sawmill site. The rails were lightly benched into side slopes and carefully laid so that there was a constant fall to the destination. The loaded rail bogies only required brakes to control the decent by gravity back down to the sawmill and horses were used to pull the empty bogies back up to the various loading sites along the route.
The contours indicate that that this system was possible on this site albeit there would be some steep sections but perhaps someone will provide more detail. Of more interest is the concept of the aerial ropeway to take timber two miles to the other station near Lentrum. This cable technology, relatively unknown in Scottish forestry, would be very familiar to some of the German personnel but it would have been a considerable challenge to construct something over this distance with wartime material shortages and limited lifting and carrying machines. Any information on the system used, number of intermediate supports, loading stations, cable dimensions and load volumes would be very welcome indeed. According to the mention in the article included in the PDF below the rope way was not very successful.
Alasdair has noted on or near the former camp site various water tanks, concrete works for ‘run of the burn’ water wheel.
The PDF contains firstly an account by Capt J M MacLennan who responsible for the management of the camp and gives a detailed description of camp conditions, organisation and lay out. Unfortunately he does not describe in great detail the forestry operations but mentions sawmill on site, peeling and stacking as well as light railway to Bunchrew and after he left the camp the construction of an aerial rope way to Lentran.
The second item in the PDF is of a map with approximate start point and end points of light railway (blue line) and ropeway (red line). Note that the lines just show direction of travel not the actual routes followed.(Note that PDF image has to be turned by clicking on top bar and finding the rotating symbol)
Download Large Version (1.1MB)
Groups: Canadian and Newfoundland sawmillers in Scotland, Forestry Areas, War time constructions and defence structures in woods and forests