Steam railways
- Ffestiniog railway
- Welsh Highland Railway (main part)
- Welsh Highland “Heritage” railway
- Snowdon Mountain Railway
- Bala Lake Railway
- The Great Orme Tramway, Llandudno
Ffestiniog railway
This 14-mile railway was built in 1832 to carry slate from the quarries at Blaenau Ffestiniog down to ships in Porthmadog harbour and uses the 1 ft 11 1/2″ gauge common among slate quarries. Originally horse-drawn, steam locomotives were introduced in 1885. It became derelict in 1946 but was resurrected in 1955 and now has a number of engines:
- Prince, Princess (1863)
- Palmerston (1864)
- Welsh Pony (1867)
- Lilla (1891)
- Blanche & Linda (1893)
- Mountaineer (1917)
- Merddin Emrys (1879)
- Earl of Merionedd (1979)
- David Lloyd George (1992)
- Taliesin (1876, scrapped 1935; new Taliesin built 1999)
- Lyd (2010)
See Wikipedia for more loco details. Unusually for steam railways, they have the workshop resources to actually build new locomotives; it is lovely to see them recreating some beautiful engines that were sadly scrapped in the distant past (the terminus shop at Porthmadog sells books on every possible detail of the slate industry and its locomotive builders). It is famous for its “Fairlie” design of engines – double ended “PushMe-PullYou” locomotives where each power unit is mounted on a swivelling bogie and can twist when it goes around a sharp corner – and also for a 360° bend where you pass the same point twice as the track spirals upwards.
See Penny Steam’s Ffestiniog YouTube videos, Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 and Part 4.
How does a steam locomotive work? You need This book.
Welsh Highland Railway.
This is (for me) an enormously nostalgic lost cause & success story.
The history is a bit complicated but basically the Welsh Highland Railway was formed in 1923 by the merger of several older railways: the Croesor Tramway (1863), North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways (1877) and Porthmadog, Beddgelert and South Snowdon Railway (1902). It wasn’t commercially viable – closed in 1937 and most engines were scrapped. What it had created though was a very scenic route across the Porthmadog floodplain, through tunnels blasted into the side of the Aberglaslyn gorge and onwards past Snowdon towards Caernarvon.
When we were very little we walked through all these tunnels – the longest is over 100 yards, a long walk in the dark.
The Welsh Highland Preservation Society was set up in 1961 to rebuild it but ended up with 1 mile of track running out of Porthmadog, now called the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway.
Meanwhile in 1987 the Ffestiniog Railway had offered the Official Receiver £16000 for the whole Welsh Highland trackway to Dinas (near Caernarvon) in an attempt to prevent it from being restored – they did not want the competition. Later however they decided to restore the line and run it themselves – the offer was then accepted, they relaid all the line and rebuilt the bridges. So:
- The main “Welsh Highland Railway” is now part of the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways.
- The “Welsh Highland Railway” and the “Welsh Highland Heritage Railway” each have their own station in Porthmadog
The Welsh Highland is notable for using Garret locomotives, brought back to Britain from South Africa. These work on a similar principle to the Ffestiniog’s Fairlie locomotives, with a swivelling power bogie at each end to allow a large loco to get around sharp corners.
- A Fairlie is symmetrical, with a double ended boiler and power bogies under the boiler pointing forwards and backwards
- Garrett has the power units mounted under a tender at each end, with the boiler suspended between them.
They now have 6 Garrets and 2 conventional engines (Wikipedia list).
See Penny Steam’s Welsh Highland YouTube videos Part 1, Part 2.
Welsh Highland Heritage Railway
This successor to the WHR Preservation Society has one of the original Welsh Highland locomotives and runs special excursions, attempting to recreate the original 1920’s character of the line.
They currently have 5-6 steam locos (Wikipedia list) including Russell, the only survivor of the original Welsh Highland.
Another of the original locos “590” was scrapped in 1937. By all accounts it wasn’t anyone’s favourite engine to drive, but its looks are really evocative of narrow-gauge steam in the 1930’s:
The WH Heritage Railway now have a similar locomotive that they are rebuilding as a 590 replica. Hurray!
Youtube video, another and a footplate ride.
Snowdon Mountain Railway
The Snowdon railway is different to almost all others in that it has run as a commercial railway ever since its start in 1876. It is not a preservation society! Also:
- It is a rack railway: the locomotives are geared to the track so they cannot slip down.
- The boilers are inclined relative to the wheels, so the boiler stays level with the water when going uphill.
- The cylinders drive the wheels via a lever: more force, less speed, for steep inclines
See the company photo gallery
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(Wikipedia image).
It runs from Llanberis to the summit of Snowdon.
nb: you cannot always tell when you buy a ticket whether you will get a steam or Diesel loco. The Diesels are noisy – try to sit at other end of the train!
Bala Lake Railway
The nice thing about this railway is that it has the little locomotives used to move slate within the quarries (all built by Hunslet) – a bit smaller than the engines used on longer routes such as the Ffestiniog.
See the engines. and timetable. The route is 4.5 miles each way and you can do an engine driver’s course.
Great Orme Tramway, Llandudno.
Llandudno is a quaint sea-side resort with a pier and a huge promontory, the “Great Orme” with Bronze-age and Roman copper mines.
This electric tramway takes you from the town, up to the top of the Great Orme.
Very scenic!