The BBC reported today that the Cairngorm funicular railway has cost UKP 5m more than was estimated when the project began. Seems like UKP 20m of taxpayers money has been wasted trying to save the Scottish ski industry which may be doomed anyway due to warmer winters. In fact two of Scotland's best known ski centres, Glencoe and Glenshee, are up for sale after loosing UKP 1m in two years.
I see that the domain registration for thecairngorms.com was updated on 2004-01-30 and www.thecairngorms.com just has a message saying "this website is coming soon" - I wonder what it will be?
The railway is now in full operation but I have left this page in place for archive purposes. See www.cairngormmountain.com for the gory details of how the landscape has been scarred. I have not been up there recently but a friend did take a ride on the train and felt she was ripped off.
I contacted Tim Rafferty and he said he is holding on to thecairngorms.com for the moment but would consider passing it on to someone with wildlife interests.
www.thecairngorms.com used to be maintained by someone called Eagle for the purpose of campaigning against the Cairngorm Funicular Railway. Although the site still exists it now just consists of a nice photograph of the Cairngorms in winter. My first guess was that a pro-development interest had wrested control of the domain name from Eagle.
thecairngorms.com is registered to an organisation called rafferty so I went to Google and found www.rafferty.co.uk/cairngorms which is the same page. I guess Eagle is really Tim Rafferty and he still controls the domain, but why has the site been pulled? Well I might email him and ask but it could just be because the railway is now a fait acompli. Anyway, here are a couple of other interesting links:
I seem to remember reading a few years ago about some idiotic proposal for development in the Cairngorms. Well the plans have progressed and it seems that a bunch of ignorant greedheads are pushing ahead with a project which will involve blasting away some of Scotland's prime mountain wilderness in order to build a funicular railway for ferrying coachloads of tourists up to a restaurant.
The list of organisations and individuals opposing the development is impressive, but big money has a way of crushing all opposition. There is a website dedicated to stopping this monster act of vandalism - see www.thecairngorms.com
www.zenatode.org.uk Ian Gregory 2010