File:Volunteers on a Welsh Railway a.jpg

Summary[edit]

1202 COUNTRY LIFE NOVEMBER 9, 1967 VOLUNTEERS ON A WELSH RAILWAY By D. H. WILSON AT Dduallt, a remote and damp spot in Merioneth, North Wales, a large and growing body of young people have become the unpaid constructors of the new Llyn Ystradau Deviation of the narrow gauge Festiniog Railway. Dduallt (it is pronounced " the alt " with a little outward puff of breath after the " a , " and means "black hill") is the present railhead of the Festiniog, although originally the line ran all the way from Portmadoc in Caernarvon to the slate quarries at Blaenau Ffestiniog. Finished in 1836, it revolutionised the transport and economy of the district, to a degree difficult to comprehend today; and by the adoption of steam engines when established opinion held this to be impossible for its 23½ in. gauge, and the very early introduction of the telegraph and the modern bogie coach, it maintained an engineering fame quite out of proportion to its size. Its ability to follow rugged contours and the haulage power of its articulated locomotives made it the model for hundreds of miles of small-gauge railway overseas. Even when its giddy days of success were gone, with slate declining in use and being carried away by the main lines, it remained a favourite with holidaymakers for its splendid mountainside location and with seasoned travellers for its refusal to think of itself as other than an important main line. Decrepitude finally became its lot, but rarely an Emmett fatalism; trains would run on time again, the public would see, when things got better. Things never did get better. At the worst possible moment the Festiniog became involved in an expensive love-affair with a superb but hopelessly unprofitable connecting line, the Welsh Highland Railway to near Caernarvon. Badly bitten, the F.R. disentangled itself shortly before the second World War, taking one locomotive and one coach as reparations. But the damage had been done and, after a steady decline during the war, the line was closed completely in 1946. It had not been taken under wartime Government control, so its remains were not nationalised. Such a line could not be allowed to die, and in 1951 a new regime supported by the Festiniog Railway Society, composed of both professional railwaymen and enthusiasts and both dedicated to seeing the whole railway reopened, took over. In two years regular summer services were operating to Minffordd (two miles) and clearance and repair work were pressing on up the line, when a great blow fell. A mile o f the track passing through an upland valley at Tan-y-Grisiau (11½ miles) was compulsorily purchased to make way for the lower reservoir of the Ffestiniog pumped storage hydro-electric scheme. Purchased is not quite correct; the land was acquired but no settlement has been made to date, there being some difference of opinion about its value. The official (House of Lords) view was that no provision need be made for reinstatement, either financially or physically, since the revival scheme was certain to fail. After 11 years of unbroken increase in passengers on the railway and in members of the society this is still apparently the official position, although in fact the hydro-electric engineers quietly hedged their bet at the last moment by widening the dam o f the lake to allow a railway across. Apart from this, the problems of reconnection were difficult enough. The lake is in a hanging valley turned parallel to the Vale of Festiniog, and the railway originally entered its upstream end by the half-mile Moelwyn Tunnel. This had to be plugged to allow a water level 20 ft. higher. Any new line, whether it climbed over the ridge or tunnelled through again, would have to gain this extra height and so be longer or much steeper. Surveys o f new tunnel routes suggested that at least £10,000 would have to be found. Fortunately, however, a civil engineer on the Society strength discovered that with a deep cutting in the ridge,

1. THE FESTINIOG RAILWAY, MERIONETH, IN 1964. Volunteers are now in the process of constructing a new line to avoid an extension to the reservoir in the Vale of Festiniog

2.- A MAP SHOWING THE ROUTE TAKEN BY THE OLD LINE AND THE ROUTE OF THE NEW LINE