This historical information sign can be found on the eastern edge of the Perthshire village of Logierait at the beginning of the road on the former line of the railway that leads to the viaduct over the River Tay. The illustrated sign reads as follows:
'HIGHLAND RAILWAY
This viaduct, over the River Tay at Logierait formed part of the branch line from Ballinluig to Aberfeldy. It was part of the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway later renamed the Highland Railway when the company merged with the Inverness and Aberdeen JR in 1865. The section of line from Dunkeld to Pitlochry had opened in June 1863 and the line completed by September that year when the Aviemore to Pitlochry section opened. Once open journey times throughout the north were greatly reduced, but to travel to London still took eighteen hours.
As the line opened the branch line to Aberfeldy was already planned and opened in July 1865. The line had to cross both the River Tummel and Tay and viaducts were constructed to cross the rivers. The Tummel viaduct was demolished in the 1980s, having been adapted to carry the A827 it was removed to allow a new road bridge, leaving only a trace of its foundations visible from the Tummel road bridge.
CONSTRUCTION
The engineer responsible for the design of the bridge was one Joseph Mitchell of Inverness. He had surveyed the Highland line beginning in 1860. The metal work for the bridge was produced in Manchester by the Fairbairn Engineering Company and the contractor Gowans and McKay. The striking feature of the viaduct are wrought iron lattice girders. They are supported by cylindrical cast iron piers filled with stone rubble and concrete. The shorter spans are of plate girder construction. The appearance of the bridge with its cast iron pilasters resembles the bridge at Dalguise.
These embellishments were insisted upon by sixth Duke of Atholl as a condition of being able to build the bridge. That they are cast iron and not stone like the bridge at Dalguise saved a considerable sum of money, but have no structural function and serve only to make the bridge more imposing. The cost of the bridge was £13772 in 1865, over £1.7 million in 2020.
OPERATIONS
From the outset the Aberfeldy branch line carried both passengers and freight. When the line opened Aberfeldy was growing rapidly and the arrival of the railway greatly facilitated the growth of the town as well as providing the local farmers access to markets far from the locality. It also allowed easy access for a new type of visitor, tourists.
After Queen Victoria and her consort Prince Albert bought Balmoral in 1852 travel to Scotland became increasingly popular and the railway allowed much safer and easier travel. The distillery in Aberfeldy which opened in 1898 and took advantage of the railway to deliver barley and ship their whisky to their warehouses in Perth. It had two sidings at the distillery and a short section of track remains on which stands a tank engine built by Andrew Barclay of Kilmarnock in the 1920s.
For almost one hundred years the branch line served the local community and as times changed both steam and diesel engines operated on the line. In 1965 just months before the centenary of the branch line the axe fell, wielded by Dr Beeching and arising from his 1963 report, the "The Reshaping of British Railways. Within months of the line's closure the track had begun to be removed.
KINNAIRD
The Logierait viaduct was sold to the local Kinnaird estate in 1967. The track bed was converted for vehicle use by the estate and it became an essential route for the community who would otherwise have to travel via Grandtully further up the valley in order to cross the Tay. Over the years the condition of the bridge deteriorated and in 1991 fearing the bridge had become unsafe, the estate attempted to close the bridge to public access. Two local residents sought interdicts to prevent the closure which were awarded unopposed by the Estate at the High Court in Perth.
LOGIERAIT BRIDGE COMPANY
In 1994 The Kinnaird Estate gifted ownership of the bridge to a newly formed community company the Logierait Bridge Company whose objective was simply to maintain a road link, via the Logierait Bridge, to the communities on either side of the River Tay. This means the bridge is the only community owned bridge in Scotland. The locally elected board of the Company set to work to raise the money required to repair the bridge, this turned out to be nearly £400,000. This was quite a task but the money was raised (with the help of Historic Scotland, Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust, the Manifold Trust, the Rural Challenge Fund and local people) and the bridge reopened in 2001.
The work of restoring the bridge involved installing new decking and safety rails and repainting. This work included the removal of old lead paint, which had the potential to impact the sensitive environment of the River Tay, resulting in the entire structure being sheathed in a plastic cocoon while the bridge was stripped back to bare metal. After dry and then wet grit blasting, the wrought iron and each of the thousands of rivet heads and exposed metal edges were repainted.
The board is still responsible for the maintenance of the bridge and have arranged to replace worn timbers on the deck, cleaned the bridge and in 2018 arranged divers to check for scour at the base of the central pillar. There was no scour but two pistols, one British one German were recovered. Presumably wartime souvenirs that the owner decided were a liability.
COMMUNITY SERVICE
The bridge forms a vital route across the Tay for those living by its side, for farmers and the emergency services. The costs of maintaining the bridge come from subscriptions by local people and businesses and by donations from both local and national organisations. The bridge forms part of national cycle routes 7 (Lochs and Glens) and 77 (Dundee to Pitlochry - "Salmon Run")
It is designated as being of Historic and Architectural importance by Historic Scotland at its highest level.
THE RIVER TAY
The river Tay is the longest river in Scotland, and has a catchment of over 2000 square miles. It has the largest flow of water of any river in the United Kingdom. The river is tidal as far as Perth and navigable by sea going vessels to there.
It is the beauty and importance as a wildlife habitat that makes the Tay unique. Valued the world over as salmon and trout river it is also home to Lampreys, otters, and after being extinct for 400 years in Scotland the Eurasian Beaver. The freshwater pearl mussel is found throughout the Tay's catchment and is critically endangered as many as thirds of the worlds functional population is found in Scotland.
LOGIERAIT
Its name literally meaning the hollow by the castle or rait, Logierait is a village of far greater significance than its size might suggest. The site of the castle in the name stands on a hill behind the village and was an iron age fort. There now stands a monument to the 6th Duke of Atholl. In times gone by a great hall stood in the village and it was here that the regality courts of the Athole family were held, essentially having absolute power over the locality. There was also a prison and Rob Roy MacGregor was imprisoned but escaped from there. Ferries were used to cross the river Tay at Logierait, initially these were rope ferries later replaced by chains and pieces of the chain were found on the south-west side of the bridge during some landscaping.
The current parish church was built in the early nineteenth century, probably incorporating earlier churches that have stood on the site since the seventh century. Within the church yard are a number of notable objects. There is a carved Pictish stone dating perhaps from when the original church stood there, elaborately carved head stones and perhaps most striking three mortsafes. These are iron cages which were placed over a fresh grave to prevent the removal of a body within by resurrectionists or snatchers who would then sell the body for anatomical dissection. In 1832 the anatomy act allowed for a plentiful supply of bodies and the mortsafes were no longer required. What is surprising is that the metal was not recycled and that one of the mortsafes is clearly meant for the grave of a child.'