It is August 1893 and the eternally optimistic railway engineer, Alexander Auchmuty Seth Kininmonth, is beginning work on the construction of what will surely turn out to be Scotland's greatest-ever railway, a magnificent line between Garve and Ullapool. Knowing that such an achievement will transform the economy of that lonely, empty corner of Scotland, Kininmonth awaits the inevitable glory, riches and personal comfort this undertaking will undoubtedly bring him.
But all does not go according to plan.
Wild Scottish weather, midges and financial incompetence all conspire against him and his dreams slowly fade; a chance encounter with two survivors of a community abandoned on a sub-Antarctic island brings about an extraordinary sequence of events, which necessitate a rapid escape by all three to the remote island of Jura. Struggling to keep his hopes for the railway alive, Kininmonth is caught up in the revolutionary events in Ullapool of 1897, where a "Citadel of the Elect" has been founded by a millennarian preacher. Historical events - factual or fictional - threaten to overwhelm his schemes, but Kininmonth refuses to accept defeat, always believing, as the worst of scenarios persistently unfold before him, that social justice and sound engineering principles will triumph.
Yes and no. A railway line was indeed proposed in 1890, to branch off from the Dingwall to Strome Ferry line at Garve, and run the 33 miles to Ullapool. Rather optimistically, there was even a proposal to extend it to Lochinver, further up the coast. Parliamentary approval was granted to the scheme. The family of Sir John Fowler, engineer-in-chief on the Forth Railway Bridge, was heavily involved in the plans, as were the Mathesons who owned Lewis and Ullapool But the project failed to find any reliable financial backers, and foundered on the opposition of the Highland Railway Company. Instead, the Highland's railway-line to Skye won the day, and Parliament passed an Act abandoning the Ullapool scheme in 1893. The project was actually revived, briefly, in 1919 - but again never got anywhere. Perhaps some other time, in some idyllic future?
The Auchmuty and Kininmonth families, incidentally, are my ancestors on my mother's side. The bearded young man whose face appears on the cover is John Kininmonth, vintage 1842, a distant great-great-great-uncle (or similar).