The Hollow Mountain by Ronald Mackay
Ben Cruachan, named after the ancient battle cry of the Campbells, is known as Scotland’s “Hollow Mountain”. For millions of years, it was solid rock. Today, it’s crammed with turbines, pumps, generators and transformers that convert waterpower into a continuous half-million watts of electricity. It did, however, stand hollow for a few short years in the 1960s. I was one of those who penetrated the core of its massiveness and scooped out its rocky heart.
***
On the building sites in London where I worked in summer as a university student, men swapped stories about highly-paid jobs that required few skills beyond brutally hard work. One was with London’s Underground maintenance teams who worked under severe time constraints after the Tube closed for the night. Another was spreading asphalt on the motorways beginning to furrow England. Also, stories about tunnel construction abounded.
Old “tunnel men” told tales of burrowing through sand and soil accompanied by the fear of cave-in. If compressed air was used, the dangers from repeated decompression were ever present.
Fascinated, I pressed an old tunnel man for details. “Choose hard rock.” He advised. “In a hard rock tunnel all you need to worry about is a headache.”
“A headache?”
“Bang-head from nitroglycerine. It kills.” He continued, “But now they use ventilators to suck most of the fumes out.”
“Where can I get work in such a tunnel?”
“There’s a new job in your country. As a Jock, you’d be a shoe-in. They’re hollowing out the heart of a mountain to replace it with a power station.”
“A power station inside a mountain?”
“It’s modelled on the Snowy Mountain Scheme in Australia, Jock. They call it a pumped-storage system. The water that drives the turbines by day, is pumped back up to a dam at the top of the mountain at night.”
I was hooked. In London, I had to compete with rugged Irishmen who flocked to England for work. In Scotland I might have an advantage.
***
The following spring, after writing my end-of-year university exams, I packed a rucksack and hitchhiked to the shores of Loch Awe. I arrived close to the construction site late at night. It was summer and still light. On the edge of the loch, I ate the last of my bread and cheese. Men in dungarees sat barbecuing around driftwood fires. I found the aroma tantalizing.
“Want one?” An unshaven man held up a sausage.
Gratefully, I joined them.
“Looking for a start?”
I nodded. “You too?”
“We’re miners. We work odd hours.” He pointed to a gaping hole in the base of the mountain behind us. “Shaft number three. We’re drilling upwards from the machine hall. In a couple of months, we’ll reach the corrie near the top of the mountain.”
I’d researched the project and so had an idea of how the hydro scheme was to operate. They’d dam the corrie on the shoulder of Ben Cruachan. They’d scoop out the heart of the mountain to house the turbines. They’d link each turbine to the dammed corrie by a tunnel, then pump water from Loch Awe up into the dam at night. During the day, that same water would be released to hurtle down each tunnel to drive its own turbine and generate electricity.
“How do I get to be a miner?” I asked.
The group of grizzled men looked at me. “It takes training,” one said. “We’ve worked in mines all our lives. We install our own monorail and cage. From the cage, we drill and blast. Specialized work.”
“I’ve no skills like that.”
“So,” he said, “here’s what you do. Tomorrow, line up at the hiring office before eight. When your turn comes, tell the boss you’re a dumper driver.”
“I’ve never driven a dumper.”
“You can drive?”
I nodded.
“There you are! Tell him you’re experienced. He’s short of dumper drivers. Hire you on the spot, he will.”
One of them rose. “Time we started.”
“Good luck!” They called as they made for the gaping black hole.
***
After a good sleep despite the rocks, I went to the gate in the steel fence. “I’m looking for a start,” I told the security guard.
“Over there!” He pointed to a prefab bearing a sign “Hiring”. A dozen rough men were already waiting.
At 8 o’clock, a gaunt figure in khaki shirt and trousers lumbered out. My miners from the previous night had warned me. The hiring boss’s body was slowly decomposing as the result of having worked too many years under compressed air and having spent too little time in the decompression chamber. This was a fresh-air job that would see him to his end.
He looked at us without enthusiasm. “Willing to work inside the tunnel?” All nodded. “Anyone operate a top-hammer drill?” Silence. “Store percussion caps?” Silence. “Drive a dumper?”
I stepped forward.
“Anybody else?” Nobody moved. He waved the others away and gestured me to follow him.
“Kinda dumper?” he asked.
“Muir Hill,” The previous night I’d gone over in my mind the Matchbox Muir Hill Dumpers I’d seen carrying half-ton loads of sand for street repair, the only dumper I knew.
“Where?” he growled.
“Dundee to Montrose.” I’d been caught off-guard.
“You drove a dumper between Dundee and Montrose?”
I nodded, nervous now.
He lowered his body to a chair as if utterly exhausted. I could see how his spine, joints, and general coordination had suffered.
“Desperate, right?” He looked at me not unkindly.
I nodded.
“I’ll take a chance. Wanna start right now?”
I nodded. He led me into the next office to complete the paperwork.
“Need camp accommodation?”
I nodded.
“Leave your pack here. Pick it up at the end of your shift. A bus’ll take you to camp. The warden will assign you a shared room. Meals included.”
While still unsure about what I’d let myself in for, I felt relief. My efforts had paid off.
“At the far end of the site,” he pointed. “You’ll find two dumpers. Tell the chief mechanic you’re a new driver.”
The site was vast, created out of freshly excavated rock. The sun shone and the loch reflected blue sky. A stream of men and huge vehicles entered and exited the dark mouth of the tunnel. I looked around. Seeing nothing that looked remotely like a Muir Hill dumper I walked to the far end of the site where a few trucks and great mountains of machinery stood. A pair of legs protruded from a gigantic yellow steel structure. I leant against part of the structure. To my surprise it was warm and giving -- the biggest rubber tire I’d ever seen. My eyes barely reached the hub. I stood with my back to the warmth and scrutinized the entire site. No dumper!
Slowly, the pair of legs inched out from underneath the yellow steel mountain.
“Lookin’ for somethin’?”
“A dumper.”
“Why?”
“I’m the new driver.” I tried to sound nonchalant.
“You?”
“Recruitment boss just hired me.”
“Experienced, right?”
“Right.”
“And you can’t see your dumper?”
I turned and looked at the tire I’d been leaning against. Twice my height. I stepped back so I could see the monster in its entirety. A Brobdingnagian version of the Matchbox Muir Hill dumper I’d imagined!
“Desperate for work?”
“Desperate.”
“I’ll show you the controls.” He climbed a steel ladder built into the side of the giant and indicated I climb up into the cab alongside him.
***
Within an hour, I was familiar with how to steer and reverse the behemoth and operate the hydraulics to tip the load from its box.
“Ready?”
I nodded. He pointed to the tunnel entrance. “Half a mile down inside you’ll reach the machine hall. Ask for the tunnel boss He’ll tell you what to do.”
Sunlight faded as I rode my monster deep into the heart of Ben Cruachan.
Steering down the tunnel in dim light from bare electric bulbs was terrifying. If I jerked the steering wheel quickly, the dumper’s enormous nose swung dangerously from side to side. I had to drive slowly and steer gently so as not to endanger the men and vehicles coming in the opposite direction and to avoid colliding with the rock walls.
Without warning, I emerged into what might have been the nave of a great medieval cathedral. The space was so vast that it disappeared into darkness despite strings of lights. I saw men and vehicles everywhere. A banksman dressed in a yellow smock gestured me to stop.
He climbed up into my cab. “I’m the tunnel boss. You’ll be working your first shift in the machine hall just to get you used to what it’s like down here,” he gestured to the huge, dark nave before us. “Later, I’ll assign you to a shaft. But we just blasted a section of the hall. I need it cleared. Reverse over there and a dozer’ll load you.”
Even before I’d stopped reversing, a bulldozer with an enormous bucket began tumbling rocks into my dump-box.
I tried to make sense of the hectic bustle going on around me. Teams of men on scaffolding were drilling into solid rock. Dumpers as big as mine, laden with rock, were emerging from dark shafts and heading up the main tunnel down which I’d come. Electricians were stringing cables and lamps to illuminate dark corners. I found the hellish scene intriguing.
But now the tunnel-boss was signaling furiously to me. I climbed down off my machine and walked over to him. The closer I got, the angrier he became.
“What?” I shouted when I got close enough to be heard.
“Get the f*** outta here!” He roared. “Dump that rock and get back down. You’re not an effing tourist.”
I heard my dumper engine growl under its 30 tons of rock. I steered carefully up the long incline, avoiding men, vehicles and the cables and pipes that thronged the tunnel wall. Gloriously, I emerged into the blessed sunshine.
A banksman was signaling to a fully-loaded dumper like mine, guiding it to the edge of the loch. I watched in amazement as the rear wheels of the dump box sank into crushed rock and stopped at the water’s edge just inches before it looked as though it might tumble in – rocks, dumper, operator and all. The driver engaged the hydraulic lift and his box rose, tumbling tons of huge grey boulders into the water. Even as his empty box was descending, he revved his great engine, roared to the tunnel mouth, and disappeared back into the dark.
So that’s the pace of work I’m expected to meet! I told myself.
Impatient, the banksman was gesticulating to me, indicating I should reverse and dump my load as close to the water as the previous driver had.
I could feel my heavy dumper begin to sink. I stopped. The banksman, furious, ordered me nearer to the water. In my side mirror, I watched the water inch closer and felt my rear wheels sink even deeper. Ignoring the banksman, I activated the hydraulics, raised my box, and dumped 30 tons of rock at the edge.
Incandescent with rage, the banksman shouted. “Park!” I parked and descended from my cab.
“An effing mess!” He pointed to my pile of rocks. “I’ll need an effing bulldozer to spread this!”
“I could see the water close to my rear wheels,” I explained. “I got scared.”
“Effing scared? You’d better get used to effing scares on this effing job.”
What can he mean? I wondered.
“Now get the f*** down there for another effing load. When you come back, don’t look in your effing mirror, don’t look at the effing water! Watch me and follow my effing signals!”
***
For the rest of the day, I repeated the pattern. Slowly, I began to feel comfortable managing the long powerful nose of my machine. The steering was more sensitive than that of a car. I learned not to overcompensate and so avoid hitting the sides of the tunnel as I went down empty and came up loaded. I learned the signal that the bulldozer driver in the machine hall gave me to tell me my box was full. I learned to ignore my rearview mirrors when I dumped into Loch Awe. I learned to trust the banksman.
“Last load this shift. Park your dumper where you found it. Pick it up at 8 tomorrow. Come back down into the machine hall. You’ll be hauling rock out of shaft number 4. I’ll show you where it is.” The tunnel boss dismissed me.
I did as I was told. Laborers were climbing into buses waiting to take them to the camp.
Mounting the bus, one of the miners from the previous night put his hand on my shoulder.
“OK?”
“OK!”
“We’re on a cross-shift.” He smiled. “You got your start!”
“Thanks to you!” I climbed onto the bus alongside thirty exhausted men.
***
Twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been a student writing my end-of-year exams in King’s College. Now, I told myself: You’ve got a well-paid job, a place to live, and all your meals thrown in. You’re no longer a poor student. For the summer, you’re the driver of a 30-ton dumper inside the beating heart of Ben Cruachan!
I couldn’t even begin to imagine the scares that lay in store.
Dumper similar to Ronald's
|
Matchbox Muir Hill Dumper
|
Ben Cruachan Mountain
Tunnel Tigers
The Queen opening Ben Cruachan power station in 1965
