Camps Viaduct (also known as Almondell Viaduct)
impressive nine-arch masonry viaduct 118 yards long and 90 feet high
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near Livingston
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Impressive nine-arch masonry viaduct 118 yards long and 90 feet high that from 1885 to 1959 carried a mineral branch line of the North British Railway to East Camps Lime Works across the gorge of the River Almond and also a feeder for the Union Canal. Crude oil from Tarbrax Oilworks was brought to Camps by the Caledonian Railway, transferring to the North British for delivery to Pumpherston Oilworks, which remained rail-connected for detergent traffic until 1981.
This is a spectacularly gracious structure when seen from below that now takes - see https://shaletrail.co.uk/shale-stories/bridge-between-life-and-death/ - the Shale Trail, the “pathway of Scotland’s Oil Rush” which is a 16 mile walking and cycling route between West Calder and Winchburgh, via the Almond Valley Heritage Centre in Livingston and Broxburn using the Union Canal.
Photos: John Yellowlees
the Shale Trail footpath and cycle-route signed from Main Street, East Calder leads down onto the trackbed which heads across a field to cross the viaduct. At the far end steps lead steeply up from the riverbank route that follows the River Almond through Almondell Country Park. The trackbed continues through wooded countryside, skirting the onetime shale-oil centre of Pumpherston to end up by the carpark at the present Uphall Station, on ScotRail’s Edinburgh-Bathgate-Glasgow-Helensburgh line.
“Vanished Railways of West Lothian” by Harry Knox (Lightmoor Press and the Caledonian Railway Association, 2017)