When you look at the Welsh Highland Railway as it is today, you would never have thought that when it opened a century ago, it was already in trouble. Despite the neighbouring Ffestiniog Railway taking control for a short while, the WHR line was closed not too long after it opened.
Jump forward 100 years and it is now a popular tourist route, winding its way through 25 miles of some of the most stunning scenery Wales has to offer, on a journey between Caernarfon and Porthmadog.
To celebrate the centenary, a gala was arranged for June 23-25 that sought to recreate some of the scenes of times gone by as part of a packed itinerary with cooperation of three heritage lines.
Money talk
The railway’s origins date back as far as the 1870s, when North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways was conceived and engineered by secretary and engineer of the Festiniog Railway Charles Spooner. The company proposed a network of eight lines that would spread as far as Betws-y-Coed, Pwllheli and Corwen, but of
