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On a bleak, rainy, gale-swept afternoon last week, several thousand Highlanders gathered at the little village of Inveruglas on the west bank of Loch Lomond. Queen Elizabeth, in a fur-trimmed coat, stood in the drizzle to tell the crowd: "This mighty scheme [will send] new strength surging into the very arteries of Scotland's being." Then she pulled the lever that set the Loch Sloy power plant in operation. As the rhythmic hum of generators signaled the first current, bagpipes skirled.

The Loch Sloy scheme is the most ambitious hydroelectric project ever completed in Britain. Its quarter-mile-long dam pens up more than 1,000,000 cubic feet of water. It is expected to have an annual output of 115 million kilowatt-hours, most of which will be sold to Scotland's industrial Lowlands. Profits will subsidize lesser schemes which will eventually bring electricity to all Scotland.

Said white-haired Tom Johnston, who lobbied loud & long for the electrification of the Highlands, is now chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board (which has eleven schemes like Loch Sloy under construction, 15 ready to begin and eight under survey): "Up to now our Highland people have been moving in that direction--south. Our firm intention is to reverse that direction."

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