Four Wheel Carriage Truck
In 1884 Boston Lodge built a four wheel carriage truck at a cost of £18 10s (£18.50). Similar vehicles had been used by main line railways from the very earliest days when the gentry would have their favourite horse-drawn vehicle loaded, and then used it to travel in for their journey. It probably has some bearing on the use of carriage/coach as the terminology for passenger carrying railway vehicles.
Though the roads in the Vale of Ffestiniog may have been poor the building of such a vehicle, as late as 1884, can only have been for a specific purpose, or as an indulgence, as it could only carry the smallest of horse-drawn vehicles such as a trap or dog cart, due to the restrictions of the loading gauge and the length of the truck.
The truck may have been built for the Oakeley family, who also had their own private carriage, or it may have been built for the convenience of C E Spooner who might have wanted to take a trap up the line when he visited the quarries he served as Consulting Engineer.
It has to be assumed that the accompanying horse would be carried in one of the horse dandies normally used on gravity trains.
There are no known photographs of the truck in service and it ended its days in the siding behind the engine shed at Boston Lodge as a jib runner for the rail-mounted crane bought by Colonel Stephens.
