Hello Evilcrow, glad that you like the shot and can almost feel the work being done. Laying out the route is a challenge since, while McConnell gives some information it feels as though yet more is needed and sadly that would likely need access to the original work done by surveyor C.R. Manners for Murdoch Paterson, who I believe was associated with the Ullapool and Garve railway company. The DEM information for NW Scotland is not that brilliant either, so there are some issues there. I have already decided to have the junction at Garve immediately to the north of the station rather than immediately to the south of it. I can recognise that someone in the U&GR may have asked why they had to have a separate station at Garve when it was supposed to be the Highland operating the line anyway (It seems as though the HR & U&GR had agreed for the HR to operate it but the U&GR had to build it). Surprisingly, the U&GR actually got an authorising Act through parliament in August 1890, just before the Highland Commissioners decided against proceeding with the line, preferring to go with the extension to Kyle by the HR, which had not then actually got an authorising act for it!!
This generated some ill-will in the faction promoting the U&GR. It appeared as if one arm of the government had encouraged them while another decided against them. So, my premise for the build starts at what if yet another arm of government (The Admiralty) approached the U&GR in the aftermath of the Highland Commissioners decision? I justify the changes on the grounds that Manners did the initial survey but further work and changing circumstances imposed some alterations, not least the insistence on the extension to Ardmair/Isle Martin. It is uncertain if the HR would have been as likely to agree to operate the U&GR in 1900 as it allegedly was in 1890 (if indeed their assurances then were genuine) so I decided to resurrect an alternative idea floated in the late 1880s that if the HR was unwilling then the GNoSR might be agreeable and that their price would be the government forcing running powers on the HR, anathema to Inverness that such a development would be!