By Kevin Plumberg
CAERNARFON (Reuters) – With a whistle and a hiss, the
47-year-old Beyer-Garratt steam locomotive lurched out of
Caernarfon station, sending plumes of smoke into the air and
obscuring the Welsh town’s 13th century castle.
The glistening black train chugged along one of Britain’s
oldest narrow gauge railways, winding through blackberry bushes
and the jagged crags of northern Wales to Rhyd Ddu, a village
at the foot of Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales.
For the people of northern Wales, the Welsh Highland
Railway acts as a link to a long-dead industrial past, when
mining and slate quarrying dominated in this hilly region.
Many now hope plans to extend the track will help shape the
future, by luring more tourists to places like Caernarfon, a
seaside town where most people speak Welsh.
The railway was opened in 1923 to haul slate from the
foothills of Snowdonia’s purple saxifrage-covered mountains but
it closed down in 1936 because of a decline in the mining
industry and a lack of passengers.
For some, the railway was one of the greatest white
elephant schemes of British industrial history: by 1927, the
growing popularity of road transport and the declining slate
industry pushed the slow and infrequent railway into
receivership.
The latest drive to revive the line dates from 1989 and was
initially supported by rail enthusiasts who won backing from
local authorities and community groups.
Now, the $62 million (US) initiative is in its final stage.
Track work has begun on a final extension and is expected to be
completed by the end of 2008. The finished line is due to open
to the public early in 2009.
“The impact of this project will be pretty big,” said Paul
Lewinn, general manager of the Ffestiniog Railway Co., which
operates the line.
SOMETHING TO DO
The railway is being extended around 10 miles from Rhyd Ddu
to Porthmadog where it will link up with a line traveling on to
Blaenau Ffestiniog, once the capital of the slate quarrying
industry, for a 40-mile total trip.
Ffestiniog Railway, the oldest independent rail company in
the world, put up 25 million pounds for the extension, with the
remainder coming from donations of money and equipment.
The gauge refers to the width between train rails. Most
railways use a standard gauge of more than 4 feet but the Welsh
Railway has a gauge of slightly less than 2 feet, which was
cheaper to make and made turning corners easier.
Lewinn, who was a narrow gauge train driver for almost two
decades, said he believed the finished line could contribute
between 15 and 20 million pounds to the economy each year by
drawing as many as 250,000 tourists a year to the region.
He was speaking as he drove along the train route from Rhyd
Ddu to Porthmadog. He parked near Dinas station where a
shipment of rolled track had just arrived from Poland for the
extension.
The extended line will be a boon to Caernarfon, the town’s
mayor said.
“When people come here it’s something for them to do, and
that’s what we want,” Mayor Tudor Owen said.
But not everyone is happy about the prospect of more people
coming to visit their picturesque region.
“Caernarfon is a town with a glorious past and an uncertain
future … the Welsh Highland Railway might be of use in
bringing in a few short-stay visitors, but it should not be
looked upon as a salvation to cure all the town’s ills,” said
T. Meirion Hughes, a local historian.
Caernarfon’s jobless rate is around twice as high as
Britain’s overall 4.7 percent rate. The town relies heavily on
drawing tourists to see the castle, built by King Edward I on
the site of a Norman stronghold.
SCENIC ROUTE
The railway has long had its detractors, not least because
it fell so spectacularly out of favor just after its creation.
In 1934, Ffestiniog Railway attempted unsuccessfully to
revive the line by taking over its lease.
But during World War Two, tracks were pulled up and trains
were demolished as part of the war effort.
The railway, which had operated at a loss since opening to
the public, fell into disuse for the next 50 years until the
Ffestiniog Railway once again came to the rescue with a plan to
rebuild the line from Caernarfon to Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Train enthusiasts are excited by the latest expansion
plans.
“This is one of the best scenic routes we’ve been on. It’s
excellent,” said Bill Swindell who drove with his wife for 2
1/2 hours from their home in Derbyshire to ride the rail to
Rhyd Ddu from Caernarfon.
The class NGG16 Beyer-Garratt locomotive he rode was the
last to be manufactured out of Manchester, once the cradle of
English heavy industry, and was then exported to South Africa.
Eight years ago, Ffestiniog Railway bought back the train.
“It’s the last to be built. It’s really something,” said
Mike Jewell, a driver for the Welsh Highland Railway.
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