For almost as long as the Talyllyn Railway has been a preserved railway, there has been a museum at its western terminus at Tywyn (named Towyn until 1975) Wharf station. Containing an interesting variety of narrow gauge engines, rolling stock and other items from across the British Isles, the initiation and development of the museum over 70 years is an interesting story in its own right.
Before the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society had even been set up, running the original fleet in a museum-like demonstration manner had been considered by L. T. C. Rolt. Owing to the clear need to relay the line, and the effort and expense required, Rolt considered converting the line to 10¼ inch gauge with a fleet of new-build locomotives and carriages which could match the carrying capacity of the original stock. The section between Wharf and Pendre would be gauntleted with 2ft 3in retained and the miniature line running between the rails, with the original two locomotives and carriages running on this short demonstration line. In Rolt’s words, from his autobiography, they “could form the nucleus of a narrow-gauge railway museum at Towyn and become ‘operable relics’” . The idea was quite a serious one, Rolt discussing it with friends and fellow future Talyllyn preservation pioneers Jim Russell and Bill Trinder, and consulting David Curwen about the idea.
Of course, the miniaturisation of the Talyllyn did not happen, Rolt writing in that “it was obvious that whatever practical engineering and financial advantages such a scheme might possess it would wholly destroy the character of the Talyllyn Railway as the sole survivor of a railway era which was otherwise extinct. Admittedly the old locomotives and rolling stock would survive, but they would survive only as museum pieces and for the rest the line would differwrote “Against my own judgement I allowed myself to be persuaded by this argument.”
