Rebuilding the Welsh Highland Railway: Britain's Longest Heritage Line

By Peter Johnson

THE REVIVAL AND RESTORATION of the Welsh Highland Railway is one of the greatest heritage railway achievements of the 21st Century, yet its success followed more than one hundred years of failure.Supported by public loans, its first incarnation combined the moribund North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways, some of the abandoned works of the Portmadoc, Beddgelert & South Snowdon Railway and part of the horse-worked Croesor Tramway. Opened in 1923, it was closed in 1937 and the track was lifted in 1941.Serious talk of revival started in the 1960s but restoration did not start until 1997, with the neighbouring Ffestiniog Railway at the helm, supported by generous donors and benefactors, the Millennium Commission, the Welsh Government and teams of enthusiastic volunteers.Author Peter Johnson steers a course through the railways complicated pre-history before describing the events, including a court hearing, three public inquiries and a great deal of controversy, leading to the start of services between Caernarfon and Porthmadog in 2011. A postscript describes post-completion developments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781473869905

Peter Johnson

Peter Johnson grew up in Buffalo, New York, at a time when they had a good football team, which seems like fifty years ago. Similar to Benny Alvarez and his friends, Peter always loved words, knowing he was going to be a teacher or a professional baseball player. Also, being from a long line of Irish storytellers, he loved reading and telling tales, and when he realized that his stories changed every time he told them, and that he could get paid for this kind of lying, he decided to become a novelist. His first middle grade novel, The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr. AKA Houdini, was named one of the Best Children's Books by Kirkus Reviews, and he's received many writing fellowships, most notably from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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INTRODUCTION

At midday on 30 October 2010, a crowd of several hundred excited people gathered on Porthmadog’s Britannia Bridge, waiting for a train. It was a bright autumnal day, although there had been a shower earlier. At 12.15, a little later than expected, traffic alarms warbled and signs started flashing, a jubilant steam locomotive whistle confirming what they were waiting for, the arrival of the first Welsh Highland Railway train carrying passengers from Caernarfon. The delighted crowd waved excitedly as they watched it rumble across the bridge to reach the Ffestiniog Railway’s station by the harbour.

What they saw was the culmination of a dream, the peak of nearly 30 years of planning, 13 years of work, nearly £30 million of expenditure, for the Festiniog Railway Company to create 25 miles of narrow gauge railway through the heart of Snowdonia. Connected to its existing line to Blaenau Ffestiniog, there was now a 40-mile narrow gauge railway network, a world-class tourist attraction.

The idea of running a railway across the neck of the Lleyn Peninsula, from the Menai Straits to Cardigan Bay, was not a new one. A proposal to extend the Chester & Holyhead Railway’s Carnarvon branch to Portmadoc had been made in 1851.

The original Welsh Highland Railway had come close to fulfilling this ambition in 1923, its route incorporating the horse-worked Croesor & Portmadoc Railway, the abandoned construction of the Portmadoc, Beddgelert & South Snowdon Railway around Beddgelert, and the moribund North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways, to create a 2ft gauge line 22 miles long from Porthmadog to Dinas, three miles from Caernarfon. Funded by loans from the local authorities and the Ministry of Transport, intended to create jobs and to open up the areas through which it ran, this railway was not blessed with success however. It could not be made to pay, either as a common carrier or as a seasonal tourist attraction, and was not reopened after the 1936 season.

With the track and other assets requisitioned for the war effort in 1941, the railway was left in a legal limbo, with no directors and a liquidator trying to realise the remaining assets for the benefit of the debenture holders, the authorities that had paid for the works in 1923. Parts of the abandoned trackbed were used as unofficial footpaths, some were sold and others absorbed by adjoining landowners.

Nevertheless, large sections remained untouched, if overgrown in parts, especially through the Aberglaslyn Pass, exerting a romantic pull on some of those who passed, many of them speculating on the likelihood of the railway being restored and trains running that way again.

The first moves to revive the railway were made in 1960 but little obvious progress was made until 1995, when the Festiniog Railway Company obtained a £4.3 million Millennium Commission grant towards the cost of reinstating it between Caernarfon and Rhyd Ddu. Surrounded in controversy, the Festiniog involvement arose from Gwynedd County Council’s attempt to acquire the trackbed and release parts of it for non-railway purposes, and the company’s attempt, initially in secret, to restrict its development as a railway.

Changing its strategy to one of complete reinstatement, including the ‘missing link’ between Dinas and Caernarfon and a connection with the Ffestiniog Railway in Porthmadog, it took a High Court hearing and three public inquiries to gain the requisite approvals, and a return to the High Court, to confirm the final decision in the FR’s favour.

Work started at Dinas in 1997, with trains running to Caernarfon from October. Beyond Dinas, progress was hindered by the prolonged decision-making on the Transport & Works Order application for powers to build the railway to Porthmadog, delaying the start of work until 1999. Then the impact of extending the railway onto the historic North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways trackbed as far as Waunfawr in 2000 was affected by transport industry disputes affecting the availability of fuel. In turn, progress towards Rhyd Ddu was affected by the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001.

A visit by HRH the Prince of Wales marking the completion of the railway as far as Rhyd Ddu in 2003 failed to shake off the aura of controversy that surrounded the project but the situation started to change with the announcement, a year later, of the Welsh Government’s decision to contribute £5 million towards the estimated £10.25 million project to complete the railway to Porthmadog. An appeal to fill a £500,000 funding gap attracted significant public support, eventually outstripping its target by some 400%.

Adoption of a different strategy enabled the employment of smaller, more local, contractors on the final section, increasing the economic benefit to the locality. Fencing and clearance work was started in January 2005 and operations were extended in stages – Beddgelert and Hafod y Llyn in 2009 and Pont Croesor in 2010 – before regular services started between Caernarfon and Porthmadog in 2011.

Throughout, members of the Welsh Highland Railway Society supported the reconstruction financially and by volunteering. On the ground, the volunteers played an essential part in advancing the railway’s track towards Porthmadog, forming two self-managed gangs for the purpose, their input recognised by a ‘golden bolt’ ceremony marking the completion of track-laying in 2009.

The significance attached to the completion of the WHR may be measured by the visit made by HM the Queen and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, who travelled between Caernarfon and Dinas in 2010, and an editorial in the Guardian newspaper in 2011. Since then, thousands of passengers have travelled over the line, creating profits to pay for the enhancement of facilities.

In practical terms, the reconstruction of the Welsh Highland Railway was completed in 2011. But its facilities were quite basic, especially at the terminal stations. Post-2011 developments, notably the three-year project to create an enlarged station at Porthmadog capable of accommodating both Welsh Highland and Ffestiniog Railway trains, and the development of plans for a new station at Caernarfon, are described in the postscript.

PART ONE

SETTING THE SCENE

The North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways at Plas y Nant. (Author’s collection)

C

HAPTER

1

IN THE BEGINNING

The opening of the Welsh Highland Railway between Porthmadog and Dinas, three miles from Caernarfon, on 1 June 1923 was the culmination of a decision taken by a joint committee of local authorities in 1914, and incorporated railways, or parts of them, that dated back to 1864.

Concerned about increased unemployment because of the outbreak of war with Germany on 4 August, the local authorities thought that completing the abandoned and incomplete Portmadoc, Beddgelert & South Snowdon Railway around Beddgelert and connecting it to the all-but-moribund North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways would be a worthwhile job creation scheme, creating a 25-mile-long 2ft gauge railway between Porthmadog and Caernarfon.

Knowing that some £100,000 had been spent on obtaining powers, land and constructing the abandoned works, that the assets could be acquired cheaply, and expecting the scheme to attract grants or loans as well as creating jobs and encouraging tourists to visit the area, an application for a Light Railway Order was lodged with the Board of Trade in November 1914.

After some debate as to whether the county council should pay the £8 bill for printing copies of the draft order in January 1915, the matter went into abeyance and was not mentioned again until 1919.

The oldest constituent of what became the Welsh Highland Railway was the Croesor Tramway, a horse-worked 2ft gauge line that carried slate from quarries in the Croesor valley on the northern flanks on the Moelwyns to the harbour at Porthmadog. These quarries were exploiting the same slate veins as those around Blaenau Ffestiniog and Tanygrisiau, whose output had benefitted from the Festiniog Railway since 1836.

Some seven miles long, its construction had been started in November 1862, under the aegis of Bangor solicitor Hugh Beaver Roberts, owner of the Croesor Fawr quarry. His tenants, he told Parliament in 1872, had complained that they could not compete with slate transported directly by the FR because their transport costs were higher. From early in 1863 they had secured some improvement by transhipping their slate at Penrhyn, on the Festiniog Railway, rather than via Cwmorthin and loading on the FR at Tanygrisiau.

Constructed to a survey made by the FR’s manager and engineer, Charles Easton Spooner, the tramway was opened in July 1864. From a terminus adjacent to the old sluice bridge at Porthmadog, its route was largely level as far as Garreg Hylldrem, just under 4½ miles, where two inclines carried it into the Croesor valley and its terminus at the foot of the Croesor quarry’s Blaen y Cwm incline, 600ft above sea level. On the lower section, the crossing of Madocks’ Tremadog canal, Y Cwt, had required the construction of a small bridge, while the Glaslyn crossing, where Roberts had been encouraged to provide accommodation for an as-yet unbuilt road that would eliminate a ferry crossing, had required a substantial structure 220ft long and 30ft wide. Both remain in situ, the latter with its decks replaced, fine tributes to mason Robert Jones of Criccieth who built them.

Thwarted in his ambition to take the tramway directly to the harbour by the inability of the Tremadoc estate to provide a valid title to the right to cross two roads in Porthmadog, in November 1864 Roberts announced his intention, under the heading Croesor and Portmadoc Railway, to obtain powers authorising the use and maintenance of the existing line by him, its extension to Borth y Gest, and to incorporate a company that might operate and maintain the railway, either jointly with himself or separately. The engineer was W.H. LeFevre, who retained C.E. Spooner’s route. James Spooner, C.E. Spooner’s father, had surveyed a similar route in 1825, before surveying the FR route in 1831.

An extract from the 1901 6-inch survey with the private tramways in the Croesor valley highlighted. (Ordnance Survey)

With no objections and a few changes to the Bill, the Croesor & Portmadoc Railway Act received the Royal Assent on 5 July 1865. The ‘existing railway’, from the foot of the first incline near Garreg Hylldrem, to Porthmadog, was vested in the Croesor & Portmadoc Railway Company and authority was given to use it for passenger traffic as well as mineral and goods traffic. Power was also given to make an ‘extension railway’, from a junction with the existing, ‘at or near its termination at Portmadoc’, terminating at Trwyn Pen Clogwyn, Borth y Gest, just over a mile from the later crossing with the Aberystwyth & Welsh Coast Railway (AWCR), including level crossings of Snowdon Street and High Street.

A significant change from the Bill had arisen from agreement reached with the AWCR, whose route to Porthmadog had been authorised in 1861 but which was not yet completed, which had sought powers for what it called its ‘Portmadoc Public Wharf Branch’, a siding to serve the harbour, in the same Parliamentary session. On 26 April 1865 the AWCR directors had instructed the company’s solicitor to withdraw ‘such part of the Bill … as refers to the harbour branch at Portmadoc on obtaining from the Croesor & Portmadoc Railway clauses securing … running powers … at a royalty of 1d per ton.’ The Croesor Act therefore required five furlongs and six chains, nearly ¾ mile, of the extension railway, to be mixed gauge, 4ft 8½in and 2ft, the AWCR’s junction with the extension railway to be built at its own expense.

An extract from the Aberystwyth & Welsh Coast Railway’s 1864 plan for its proposed ‘Portmadoc public wharf branch’. The routes of the Croesor Tramway, Gorseddau Railway and Festiniog Railway are highlighted in red, blue and green respectively. The short Croesor branch opposite the flour mill serves a saw mill. (Parliamentary Archives)

Seen in 2006, Garreg Hylldrem, the outcrop on the right, was cited as the location for the terminus of the Parliamentary section of the Croesor Tramway in 1865. The tramway’s abandoned formation is visible to the right of centre.

Looking towards Porthmadog, the Croesor valley is seen from the top of the New Rhosydd incline. At the bottom, the Croesor quarry incline joins it from the left. The quarries owned the inclines. The private Croesor Tramway started close to the later Blaen y Cwm hydroelectric power station, slightly to the right of centre. (Alasdair Stewart)

As the AWCR, or its successor, the Cambrian Railways, was never able to justify expenditure on the junction, the short section of the extension that was built, as far as the FR’s harbour tracks at Ynys y Tywyn green, was only laid with narrow gauge track. After the coast line was opened on 10 October 1867 an exchange facility was developed alongside the Beddgelert siding on the edge of Porthmadog. This had been constructed by contractor Thomas Savin as a part of the Beddgelert Railway, a standard gauge branch on which construction was abandoned when he was bankrupted in 1866.

The extension beyond the public wharf, where the Festiniog Railway terminated, to Borth y Gest, was not built although Cwmorthin’s private siding covered most of the route. The bridge to carry the railway over the Llanfrothen road near Garreg Hylldrem was not built either.

An extract from the Croesor & Portmadoc Railway 1864 plan. The original route in Porthmadog is highlighted in dark blue. (Parliamentary Archives)

In operation, the Croesor Tramway largely escaped being photographed but in this postcard view of Croesor and Cnicht the slate fence running diagonally across the picture hides the track before it emerges into view at the level crossing by the school. Despite its remoteness and small population Croesor sustained a Methodist chapel and a post office as well as the school when the photograph was taken.

The company’s authorised capital was £25,000, with borrowing of one-third of that amount permitted, in addition, when it was fully subscribed. Although the directors held qualifying shares, Roberts held the majority and remained the tramway’s de facto owner. According to an advertisement offering the Rhosydd quarry for sale in 1873, the Rhosydd Slate Company Ltd had contributed £5,000 to the cost of the tramway’s construction, and paid around £4,000 for its own connecting tramway, including 150 wagons.

The tramway’s existence certainly prolonged the lives of the Croesor quarries but the scale of its business may be judged by the knowledge that it only required four wagons of its own and there was never enough traffic to justify the use of locomotives. Use was made of FR wagons, for which mileage was paid, and no doubt some of the quarries’ own wagons made the journey to the harbour. After the AWCR was opened in 1867 and before the FR’s interchange with it at Minffordd was opened in 1872, some Ffestiniog slate was routed inland via the harbour and the tramway.

On 2 October 1871 Roberts made an agreement to sell the tramway to the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways’ promoters for inclusion in their proposed network of railways across Snowdonia. The NWNGR prospectus issued in November listed him as one of the provisional committee members. Others included FR directors G.A. Huddart and Livingston Thompson. The engineer was C.E. Spooner, with Hugh Unsworth McKie as acting engineer; both signed the plans.

Saying that the scheme was intended to bring railways to parts of North Wales hitherto unconnected because of the cost of building standard gauge lines, that the districts to be served were most suitable for narrow gauge and that construction costs would be reduced because the railway would follow the contours and require no expensive cuttings, bridges or viaducts, the prospectus described a route starting at Porthmadog, with connections to both the FR and the Cambrian Railways, erstwhile AWCR, to Beddgelert, Pen y Gwryd, Capel Curig, Betws y Coed and Corwen, with connections to the London & North Western Railway and the Great Western Railway, respectively, at the last two.

Operating costs would be lower than the norm, the prospectus forecast, citing the FR as an example of a narrow gauge line that paid large dividends, conveniently overlooking the fact that the FR’s success was due to its monopoly of the slate traffic.

The notice of intention to apply to Parliament for an Act published on 28 November provided more details, adding proposals for lines from a junction with the London & North Western Railway’s Carnarvonshire Railway on a site near Llanwnda, three miles from Caernarfon, to Bryngwyn and Rhyd Ddu, and from Pwllheli to Porthdinlleyn, and a branch to Penmachno, and seeking approval to lay a third track on the Cambrian line between Pwllheli and Porthmadog, the whole producing over eighty miles of narrow gauge railway.

The lines from Dinas were primarily to serve slate quarries, several of them owned by members of the provisional committee. From an operating perspective, the route from the junction with the tramway, a little further north than the present Croesor Junction, to Betws y Coed/Corwen would have been interesting, with steep gradients and several detours to obtain affordable river crossings. Any railway manager or director would have seen that its main purpose was to take east-west traffic from the London & North Western Railway by offering a shorter route to or from the English Midlands and north-west.

An extract from the deposited plan for the NWNGR’s Moel Tryfan undertaking. (Parliamentary Archives)

It will come as no surprise, therefore, that objections from the well-established LNWR, seeking powers for its branch from Betws y Coed to Blaenau Ffestiniog during the same session, saw off the lines to Corwen and Penmachno. The Cambrian was successful in its objection to the mixed-gauge use of its track too, the promoters not helping their cause when they had been unable to explain how it would be operated, and the loss of this section took the Porthdinlleyn line with it.

Receiving the Royal Assent on 6 August 1872, the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways Act authorised construction and operation of three railways: the first starting at a junction with the Croesor & Portmadoc Railway and terminating near Betws y Coed, 22 miles; the second starting at Llanwnda and terminating in Llandwrog parish at Bryngwyn, 5 miles; the third starting at a junction with the second and terminating in Beddgelert parish at Rhyd Ddu, 7 miles. Despite the proximity of the first and last at Beddgelert, 3½ miles by road, there was no suggestion that they should be connected. The right to use the Croesor & Portmadoc Railway was approved, the wording of the clause suggesting that there was no intention of purchasing it.

Over the years, it was alleged on several occasions that the inconvenient terminus near Llanwnda, rather than Caernarfon, or even Bontnewydd, which had a larger habitation, was forced on the undertaking by threats of opposition to the whole scheme from the LNWR. If that was the case, then the threats were made before the promoters deposited their plans. Between Pen y Groes and Caernarfon, the LNWR line incorporated the 3ft 6in gauge horse-worked Nantlle Railway, Caernarfonshire’s oldest, opened in 1828. The conversion to standard gauge, and the connection from Afon Wen, had been nearly complete when the contractor, Thomas Savin, became bankrupt in 1866. Stone boundary walls that exist in some parts between Dinas and Pant, near the present Hendy crossing, are relics of the Nantlle Railway. The final section into Caernarfon was completed by the LNWR in 1870.

The slate wharf at Caernarfon in the 1860s. Edward Preston, whose name is emblazoned on the cart in the centre of the picture, was the Nantlle Railway’s agent. A Nantlle slate wagon can be seen to the left of the cart.

The NWNGR Act required that the first line should be financed, constructed and operated separately from the others, under the name of the ‘general undertaking’. The other two, intended primarily to serve slate quarries on the northern flank of Moel Tryfan, were grouped as the ‘Moel Tryfan undertaking’. In total, the capital comprised £216,000, £150,000 for the general undertaking and £66,000 for the Moel Tryfan. When all the land required for the general undertaking had been purchased and half of that railway completed, the NWNGR could give the Croesor & Portmadoc Railway twelve months’ notice to relay its track between the proposed junction and the terminus of its extension railway at Portmadoc quays to be suitable for locomotives. The agreement to this effect had been made on 9 April 1872, Roberts signing over the seal of the Croesor & Portmadoc Railway, ‘For self and co-promoters of the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways Company’.

Seven directors were permitted. Those named in the Act were Roberts, Livingston Thompson, Sir Llewelyn Turner and James Hewitt Oliver. Turner, who became chairman, was a Caernarfon dignitary, who in 1871 told the census-taker that he was a ‘knight, justice of the peace and deputy constable of Carnarvon Castle’. He had a full life and published his autobiography, which unfortunately does not refer to his involvement with railways; one of his friends was Samuel Holland, the quarry owner who encouraged Henry Archer to build the Festiniog Railway. Oliver was a Dubliner, an officer of the Merioneth volunteer corps and apparently of independent means.

There was no public utterance in response to the Act but in November 1872 the company advertised its intention to seek powers to lease the Moel Tryfan undertaking to Roberts, who owned the Braich quarry on Moel Tryfan, making an agreement with him to that effect on 23 April 1873.

The agreement followed the award, on 23 December 1872, of a contract to build the railways to H.U. McKie and George Lea. McKie, a farmer’s son born in Garstang, Lancashire, had been on the provisional committee and lived then at Tan yr Allt, Tremadoc, once the home of William Alexander Madocks, builder of the Glaslyn embankment at Porthmadog. McKie had made