Last week I was on vacation in North Wales. I stayed in an apartment by the Ffestiniog Railway station in Porthmadog. The apartment has a balcony which makes an excellent place to watch trains. AS well as FR trains, you can also see trains on the Network Rail Cambrian Coast line. I was lucky enough to see two of the Ffestiniog’s Double Fairlies double heading, and I recorded this on videotape!
I also visited the Welsh Highland Railway at Caernarfon for their gala weekend and saw all three of their Beyer-Garratt’s running. I had haulage with both of the S. African ones but K1, the very first Garratt which has just been restored to working order was only running up and down.
There’s a 3 day rover ticket available which covers the FR, WHR and Network Rail iines in N. Wales. The price of £30 is good value given that a round trip ticket on the FR costs £16 and on the WHR £11. Although this rover ticket does not include the Tal-y-llyn railway, they give you a £2 discount on production of a Network Rail ticket (ie if you can show you’ve travelled there by main line train).
I also spent a day exploring the disused two foot gauge slate quarry lines in the Dinorwic quarries at Llanberis, which are above the Welsh Slate Museum (free admission to the Museum). Many of the lines in the quarry still exist whilst the Llanberis Lake Railway uses the tiny Hunslet 0-4-0ST’s that used to work in the quarries. This line is built on the trackbed of the old four foot gauge Padarn Railway which used to carry two foot guage wagons piggyback to the nearby Port Dinorwic where they would run down a 2’ gauge incline to the quay. (Origially 2’ gauge ran all the way from quarry to port but in the 1840’s they replaced it with the 4’ gauge line - why remains a mystery!).