Template:Featured article/May 2020
Boston Lodge Works is the principal workshop of the Festiniog Railway Company, and was built on the site of the main quarry for the stone used in building the Cob from 1808 to 1811. Boston Lodge (formerly known as Penrhyn Cottage) was renamed after Wm. Madocks's parliamentary constituency in Lincolnshire. From January 1809, during construction of the Cob, it served as office, stables and barracks. The Festiniog Railway Company Works was established there in 1842 for the repair of wagons and has expanded greatly around the original buildings. The site, in the pre steam era, was also a horse station.
On the occasion of the Open Days at Boston Lodge Works on 15th & 16th September 1979, for the Silver Jubilee of the Ffestiniog Railway Society, the then Works Manager, the late Paul Dukes, produced “An Introduction to Boston Lodge Works” for the benefit of visitors, from which this and following extracts are taken:
“In the years from 1847 to 1851 the Works was considerably developed from its humble origins by the construction of ferrous and non-ferrous foundries, a pattern making shop, a blacksmiths shop, a carpenters shop, and an engine house in which a steam engine provided power for machinery in a sawmill, pattern shop and machine shops. In the 1870s further construction provided a paint shop, joiners shop and erecting shop from which latter in 1879 and 1885 the Fairlie double engines “Merddin Emrys” and “Livingston Thompson” emerged as entirely own designed and own built machines. That the Works had the capability both in facilities and skill to produce such locomotives amply demonstrates the foresight and abilities of our predecessors.”
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