Welsh narrow gauge Festiniog Railway double-ended Fairlie steam locomotive taking water in the 1930s
The Festiniog Railway is a 1 ft 11 1⁄2 in (597 mm) narrow gauge heritage railway, located in Gwynedd, Wales. It is a major tourist attraction located mainly within the Snowdonia National Park. The railway is roughly 13 1⁄2 miles long and runs from the harbour at Porthmadog to the slate mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, travelling through forested and mountainous scenery. The line is single track throughout with four intermediate passing places. The first mile of the line out of Porthmadog runs atop an embankment locally called the Cob, which is the dyke of the Traeth Mawr "polder". The line was constructed between 1833 and 1836 to transport slate from the quarries around the inland town of Blaenau Ffestiniog to the coastal town of Porthmadog where it was loaded onto ships. The railway was graded so that loaded wagons could be run by gravity downhill all the way from Blaenau Ffestiniog to the port. The empty wagons were hauled back up by horses. In 1860, the board of the company began to investigate the possibility of introducing steam locomotives to increase the carrying capacity of the railway. The original passenger coaches (some of which survive) were small four-wheeled vehicles with a very low centre of gravity, which led to them being nicknamed 'bug boxes'. In 1872, the FR introduced the first bogie carriages to operate in Britain, Nos 15 and 16, which were also the first iron-framed bogie coaches in the world and are still in service From 1949, various groups of rail enthusiasts attempted to revitalise the railway. In 1951, railway enthusiast Alan Pegler was approached by friends to buy and clear the outstanding debt on the derelict Ffestiniog Railway, to enable its purchase. Lent £3,000 by his father, he and the volunteers obtained control of the company on 24 June 1954 This photograph (from a negative in my collection) probably dates from about 1935 and shows a double-ended Fairlie locomotive -Taliesin, Merddin Emrys, or Livingston Thompson
Size: 3375px × 2145px
Location: Boston Lodge, Portmadoc, Wales
Photo credit: © Digbydachshund / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: double-ended, emrys, fairlie, festiniog, ffestiniog, gauge, livingston, locomotive, merddin, narrow, railway, steam, taliesin, thompson, welsh
