Last week I promised to serve up the first batch of Colin Macdonald's Munro memoirs from Lesotho, "outside interventions permitting". Well, there has been an outside intervention - no, not the death of the most dearly loved centenarian in the universe (although please note that I am bedecked in black tie while typing this and yesterday climbed Ben Cleuch at a suitably solemn pace).
No, what needs to take precedence this week is another interruption to the smooth running of the CairnGorm Mountain [sic] funicular railway, and the most serious incident thus far. Or, rather, two related incidents, each of them worrying.
On Good Friday, 29 March, the train broke down at one of the most awkward-of-access points on the line and between 50 and 70 passengers (reports vary) had to be evacuated by a combination of funicular staff and the local mountain rescue team. This was both laborious and precarious: passengers were lowered 6m or so on ropes and, for the youngest, a tall ladder was used. Summit Talks has heard from Tom Orr of Musselburgh, whose brother Bob and family were among those rescued. The staff were reportedly "inappropriately cheery throughout", while "one 80-year-old American objected to being called 'young man'."
When the Orrs went to ask for their money back the ticket vendor asked to see their tickets - the letter of the company's law no doubt, but hardly the most sensitive or sensible of approaches given the circumstances. Tom Orr reports that while his brother was "very restrained" at the time, he is still, almost a week on, "feeling quite angry about the whole thing".
He isn't the only one, as in addition to the initial incident in which the passengers had every right to feel angry and aggrieved (not to mention worried and fearful), there was then an unpleasant second helping. Some of the passengers descended the hill in ski buggies, but others chose to await the restarting of the funicular, which was switched to manual operation via its auxiliary engine.
When the carriages reached the bottom station they were subjected to what the operating company describes as a "sharp and sudden stop". Various of those on board have phrased this rather differently: they say the train ran into the buffers. There were injuries (whiplash, bumped head, shock), with seven passengers seeking medical attention, and there is talk of lawsuits being filed against CairnGorm Mountain.
The company has accepted that there was an accident but has described it in such a way that passengers could almost be mistaken for thinking it was being downplayed rather than admitted for what it was: something bad enough that came close to being very serious. Both parts of the incident, the rope-dangle and the buffer-bump, caused considerable distress - and, while there were neither fatalities nor major injuries, things could easily have been much worse.
CairnGorm Mountain has chosen to focus on the technical details, however, eg "When carriages are being driven via their auxiliary diesel motors, the braking and deceleration system for the funicular is operated manually and visually from either the control room or plant room. In such cases, when having to use what are auxiliary systems to the main braking systems as well as the driving systems, deceleration and stopping is not as smooth as the electronic system. In many ways, it is analogous to the difference between landing an aircraft manually or using the more automatic landing systems. In this particular case, the combined weight of the laden-down carriage, combined with stretch in the rope, meant that when the brake was applied by the operator, it came to a sharp and sudden stop immediately prior to resting on the buffers, as normal."
This looks remarkably like the company is attempting to pass off the accident as routine or even normal, but surely they can't be happy with the idea that any manually-driven carriage will jolt in this way, regardless of whether or not it hit the buffers (something which the company's "immediately prior" appears to suggest didn't actually happen).
As reported here previously, this was not the first unfortunate incident to befall the funicular since it began operating just before Christmas, and the latest affair can have done little to boost the railway's chances of making it through its trial operating period without being subject to serious attention from the Health and Safety Executive. A spokesman has thus far only commented that the HSE has received an initial report and is awaiting further information that will "determine what, if any, action we will take".
CairnGorm Mountain chief executive Bob Kinnaird has certainly chosen an interesting time to go on annual leave: he's away from increasingly beleaguered slopes until 15 April.
All this coincides with the last full set of financial figures being issued for the old Cairngorm Chairlift Company the forerunner of CairnGorm Mountain. The financial year 2000-01 brought a healthy 110,000 skier days but a less than healthy operating loss of £530,000.
Over the same period the rival Glenshee ski centre had 118,000 skier days and made a profit of £50,000: the first time that Glenshee had ever beaten its northern neighbour on skier days. With the wonderful late winter conditions and the foot and mouth crisis, if anything, boosting skier numbers, 2000-01 was arguably the best season in a decade.
Yet Hamish Swan, the CCC and now the CGM chairman, has described the situation thus: "The combination of poor trading and the need to ensure The Funicular project [sic] is completed in its entirety has placed the company in a fragile financial position."
Things are not being helped by the six-figure rent now being paid to Highlands and Islands Enterprise by CGM after the company sold its buildings to HIE last autumn for a sum believed to be around £1 million (the latest financial report only specifies £525,000 received from HIE for "tenants improvements").
The idea of selling and then leasing back was instigated as a way of offsetting what the report calls "major cashflow concerns shortly after opening", but it doesn't seem to be working out well, and the current crop of technical and safety worries aren't likely to prompt a flood of money-wielding summer visitors.
We will obviously have to wait another 12 months for the first set of CairnGorm Mountain figures, but with less ski-friendly weather this winter and with the funicular only just having started up, these will make for interesting reading.
Dave Hewitt
4/4/2002
You can contact Dave at Dave.Hewitt@dial.pipex.com
