The Factor and Railway Promotion in the Scottish Highlands: The West Highland Railway

Abstract

A late-comer to the region, the West Highland railway was presented as a “landowners’ line”, emulating the successful schemes of earlier date which genuinely merit this description. Speculation, inter-company rivalry and the prospect of government assistance were the main ingredients of the West Highland project; but a proprietors’ coalition was an essential precondition and estate factors were necessarily involved – as instigators, advisers or parliamentary witnesses. The immediate record of promotion, construction and early operation is rich and there is a wider context of “railway politics” that offers new insights into the intensely varied role of estate factors; that they were not simply agricultural or rural managers, but also industrial and transportation entrepreneurs. As such, their relevance to the historian lies in the industrial as well as the agricultural economy.