File:Volunteers on a Welsh Railway b.jpg

Summary[edit]

COUNTRY LIFE NOVEMBER 9, 1967 a horseshoe bend and a spiral, he could lay out a line which would require only 75 yd. of tunnel, still be no steeper than the original, and not — except for the tunnel and a swamp section require any expensive machinery. Men and wheelbarrows could do it. The narrow gauge of the Festiniog was its own salvation. To put effect to his words, the civil engineer gathered some friends and in January 1965 they started work on the new line themselves at Dduallt station, on land donated by a generous well-wisher. Half a mile down-line from the station is the 14th-century Dduallt Manor House, perched on the hillside and accessible only by the railway or by steep and often treacherous footpaths. It is reputed to have been Cromwell's forward headquarters for his assault on Harlech Castle, and had been empty except for summer use since the 1930s . The railway found a great friend in its new owner, for having chartered several trains to bring in supplies for its repair and restoration. Col. A. H. K. Campbell offered the use of an old stable attached to the rear of the house as a hostel for the diggers. The wheelbarrows were very soon joined by a compressed-air plant, tools and light railway equipment winkled out from such unlikely comers as the bottom of a disused lift-shaft at Oxford Circus underground station and a seashore in Anglesey. The first section to be built is the spiral, which circles Dduallt station and is the first functional (as distinct from incidental) one produced in Britain. Although the new line will be 2¾ miles long, the earthworks here will comprise a fifteenth o f the whole task; already 5,000 tons of rock have been moved by hand and 300 yd. o f trackbed built. The procedure is steady and unchanging: rock is blasted from cuttings, loaded into tipper wagons, trundled on temporary tracks to the embankment sites and tipped. Where the new embankment curves away from the old there is a dearth of material and so the station site itself is being widened and lengthened in cutting. The diggers have a hard core of civil engineers and architects, but anyone who can shovel or pick is welcome: schools and universities send regular parties. Progress is measured more by the truckload than by visible distance gained, for a railway built through rock by amateurs at weekends is like a plant: it only changes if you go away for a while. For this reason attendance is regular but well spaced out. If a hard rock seam has cramped your hands, it is especially encouraging to find on your next visit that another party has dealt with it. Newcomers are warned to break themselves in before shovelling all day; a flat-out effort to start with may not only injure them, it will be wasted, for there is a way with rock that must be learnt. The rewards of this activity must seen few to anyone who has not tried it, but its attractions bring more and more people and a second hostel has had to be built - a hut immediately outside the dry end of the old Moelwyn Tunnel. Volunteers arrive by car at Tan-y-Bwlch very early on Saturday mornings, having driven from London or Gloucester or Sheffield, and push trolleys the 2½ miles, piled high with all their clothing and supplies for the weekend: on Sunday afternoon they return by gravity on the Festiniog's continuous gradient. Ilustrations: 1. The British 4 . - THE DDUALLT SPIRAL WHERE TWO EMBANKMENTS REACH OUT ACROSS A HOLLOW. “ Already 5,000 tons of rock have been moved by hand and 300 yd. of trackbed built"