'Drugs money' funded Kyle line

Book reveals scenic Highland railway line's founder made his fortune from
the illicit Far East opium trade

By: Bill Mowat

ONE of Scotland's most scenic railways was founded by drugs money. The
63mile Kyle line in the Highlands, would never have been opened got off
the ground without cash from the drugs dope trade, a new book marking its
centenary reveals.

The spectacular feat of Victorian civil engineering, which once featured in
Michael Palin's Great Railway Journeys of the World TV series, stretches
coast to coast from Dingwall in Easter Ross to Kyle of Lochalsh through
some of most stunning scenery in the Highlands.

But a Scottish author claims that the visionary behind the line was a man
who left the Highlands as a penniless 21 year old and returned after 15
years with a massive fortune which would be worth at least £60 million
today from the opium international narcotics trade.

Alexander Matheson's cashstrapped family had been forced to part with
their modest estate at Attadale in Wester Ross, but, in a stroke of good
fortune, in 1826, he was invited to join his uncle in the Far East. This
uncle was James Matheson, a native of Sutherland, who had joined a fellow
Scot, William Jardine, to oversee the massive illicit trade in opium from
British India to China.

James Matheson, who was later knighted, and his partner, went down in
history as the world's biggest drug dope dealers when Chinese officials
seized and burned one of their consignments of more than 1,000 tonnes of
opium.

In response, Britain sent in the full might of the Royal Navy to secure the
trade of India's most valuable export. As hostilities raged in 1840 Alex
Matheson returned to the Highlands and rapidly set about spending much of
his new fortune on becoming the most influential laird in Ross and Cromarty
with total estates covering 220,000 acres.

In his new book Rails to Kyle of Lochalsh the story of the Dingwall and
Skye Railway, Ayrshireborn David McConnell claims Alex Matheson was the
"father" of the Kyle line, initially promoting the concept and becoming the
founding company's biggest investor.

Alex Matheson, by then an MP, persuaded other Highland lairds, including
his uncle who had bought the whole of the Isle of Lewis, to give financial
backing to his visionary scheme.

But even Alex Matheson's pockets were not deep enough to push the tracks
all the way to Kyle of Lochalsh, then no more than a rocky dot on the map,
less than half a mile over the sea from the Isle of Skye.

For the first 27 years the line to the West Highland coast actually
terminated at Strome Ferry, in Wester Ross, 11 miles short of its
originally intended destination.

Alex Matheson (18051886) did not live to see the completion of his dream.
It required massive government grants to ensure that the last section of
"iron road" was laid through the spectacular West Highland scenery. This
needed an army of 900 navvies to blast 31 cuttings, of up to 65 feet deep,
using high explosives.

Huge quantities of solid rock between 30 and 40 feet deep in places had to
be cleared to create the site for the station, sidings and deepwater pier
at Kyle of Lochalsh.

The extension, which opened on 2 November, 1897, was the most expensive
length of railway ever constructed in the British Isles, costing four times
as much per mile as the earlier line from Dingwall to Strome Ferry.

In his book, McConnell states: "The fact that Alex Matheson had been the
chief promoter of the Dingwall and Skye Railway was wellknown in the
Highlands.

"He was the first shareholder to double his already large subscription when
the company needed financial help most, and without his enterprise the
railway would not have been built."

The Kyle line is now a key attraction for tourists in the Highlands,
though, in its earlier years its main importance was in providing an outlet
for the fleets of herring boats working out of Stornoway on the Isle of
Lewis and other harbours in Skye and Wester Ross.

During the First and Second World Wars the line was an important link to
the naval base which was then operating at Kyle of Lochalsh.

ScotRail has guaranteed the present level of Kyle line services for the
next six years, and it now has an active army of volunteers called the
Friends of the Kyle Line who protect and promote it.

The book, published this week by the Oakwood Press, specialists in rail
history, retails at £25.00.