Whistle (Scotland)

Whistle

an installation in Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park

“A Driver should [...] sound the engine whistle when necessary, especially as a warning to persons on the line and frequently when passing through tunnels..”

Handbook for Railway Steam Locomotive Enginemen - British Transport Commission. 1957 p.19

The railway north from Callander towards Crianlarich played a central role in what was to become a National Park.

Built in 1866 the line connected Glasgow and Stirling with the ferry ports at Oban as part of the big Victorian dream of connecting the country. The section between Callander and Killin (Glenoglehead) took the railway through some of the most spectacular and remote areas of the southern highlands. Villages along the route thrived with the advent of increased access to bigger markets and the influx of tourists and new villages built to cope with the demand. When a new branch was built to Killin, the old Killin Station was renamed Glenoglehead and promoted as a destination for hill walkers to explore the wild hills around it.

The line closed in 1964 as part of the Beeching cuts - the last train left Callander Station with 50 detonators echoing up the line behind it as a final farewell.

‘Whistle’ is a proposed installation which will audibly traverse the former railway line, linking it to its past. A series of steam engine whistles at 1km intervals will cascade up the path of the railway beyond Glen Ogle. Each whistle will trigger off the next at 0.5 second intervals such that the ripple will traverse the entire 18 mile length in 9 seconds. Each whistle will echo and resonate with its own immediate landscape - those in wooded areas will sound very different to those in wider, wilder valleys. As such the piece will have very distinct and different presences at every stage along its route. In clear still conditions it may be possible to hear all 21 whistles - the weather playing as much role in its sound as the topography. As a rapid, linear sound installation, the sounds to a visitor, will draw a visual line along the route from south to north through ever wilder landscapes before fading into the vastness of Glen Dochart.

The whistles will be replicas of those on the Stanier ‘Black 5’ engines - the line was run almost exclusively by those engines from the mid 1930’s until the line closure. The whistles on those engines were quite specific and were in turn descended from those designed for the Caledonian Railway company who originally built the line. It’s entirely possible that that whistle sound was the only whistle sound heard on that line. Sound is a very powerful trigger of memory and it is hoped that those who remember the railway in use will have a very powerful personal experience of the piece.

The installation will be made from 42 identical units mounted on a 3m wooden pole to be planted in the ground. Each unit will consist of a steel steam engine whistle powered by a small cylinder of compressed air. Triggering will be by RF (radio control) with each unit receiving the signal to sound the whistle then sending on another signal to the next unit with a 0.5 second delay. The simple control circuit will be powered by a 12v battery and enclosed in a locked, weatherproof box. The initial triggering will either be manually from the first unit, via sms from a mobile phone, or on a built-in timer on the first unit.