[This post was sent as a letter to the Badenoch and Strathspey Advertiser, which has been providing excellent coverage of the funicular failure, and should appear in that paper today]
In March 2018 I applied to Highlands and Islands Enterprise under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act for the ADAC Structures report into the funicular dated 06/01/2017. This was refused by HIE, but subsequently, after another request, it was released on18/09/2018. The examination that formed the basis of this report was actually carried out in AUTUMN 2016.
Parkswatch has covered how the ADAC reports reveal serious failures by HIE and Natural Retreats in the management of the ski lifts on Cairn Gorm (see here). I have been re- examining the report in the light of the shutdown and noticed this comment about the funicular in para. 2.4 of the Executive summary:
“The problem manifests itself as excessive deflections, leading to cracking which will ultimately reduce the design life of the structure”, and “further detailed investigations would be required”.
How exactly did the engineer notice these “excessive deflections”?
(a) Movement in the beams carrying the rails. Not really likely as with the kind of movement seen by the naked eye you would expect the ends of the beams to be grinding away.
(b) Movement of the piers. Again the movement would have to be quite significant to be observed by the engineer.
(c) Movement of the Ancon bearings. These are the supports on top of the piers and support the whole track. The bearings on one side are so manufactured as to only allow longitudinal movement. The bearings on the opposite side allow longitudinal and more crucially lateral movement. In my opinion, although I am not a structural engineer, this leads me to believe that what he noticed was an unusual wear pattern on these bearings.
In regard to the second part of his quote, ”further detailed investigations would be required.” HIE have said that the next reports for the Funicular are from July 2018 and those on the Ancon bearings date from August 2018. If that is correct then it took OVER TWO YEARS before those detailed investigations were actioned. Two years in which just maybe repairs could have been made, or if that was not feasible, then the Ciste chairlifts could have been brought back into service, as a cheaper option while the Funicular was repaired, and which would at least have reduced the impact on the Speyside economy.
HIE have now had the COWI report into what has gone wrong for over two months and yet still no word for all those whose livelihood depends on the success of Cairngorm and the tourism it generates.
It is disgraceful that HIE has not publicly released the COWI report by now. What HIE seem to forget is that it is taxpayers’ money that has paid for the funicular and consequently we (the taxpayers) should have immediate access to this report. HIE state that they are seeking a peer review of the report before releasing it. There are plenty of qualified engineers (including a good friend of mine) who would be very interested in professionally review this report and I’m sure keen to publish their conclusions – for free.
After the excellent Q&A meeting held in the MacDonald centre on 6 December last year, one of the panel told me that HIE personnel involved had changed their attitudes and were now behaving very humbly. It would appear that since then they have just reverted to ‘type’ and reverted to their secretive ways. Meantime, the Scottish Government and the Cabinet Secretary responsible (Fergus Ewing MSP) are noticeable by their absence. HIE must be taken out of the process for assessing the issues on Cairn Gorm and developing the future. As has been said by many, their track record on Cairn Gorm merits a full and independent investigation into what has gone wrong and how so much taxpayers’ money could be wasted.