NARROW GAUGE NEWS
Railway unveils £4.5m programme to realise long-held ambitions.
The Ffestiniog Railway has released details of a programme to restore and enhance the facilities at Boston Lodge works. With buildings dating from 1808 and in railway use from 1836, Boston Lodge is believed to be the oldest railway workshop in continuous use in the world. The FR faces the challenges of accommodating the additional rolling stock required to operate the Welsh Highland Railway, refurbishing a range of run-down 19th-century listed buildings on a site that originally had no road access, and drainage that met no current standards. The Boston Lodge plans were developed following an exhaustive search to see if a suitable site with road and rail access could be found in the Porthmadog area. When complete, the FR will be able to store all of its operational carriage stock under cover every night, as part of its long-held ambition of increasing capacity five-fold. There will also be three locomotive sheds; a three-road shed for double Fairlies, another three-road shed for smaller engines and one for an ‘NGG16’ Garratt. The 1970s erecting shop will also be replaced with a new, larger building equipped with an overhead crane serving six roads. To facilitate the new works, a new access road was made in 2016 and a scheme to improve and modernise the drainage was completed in 2017. The first phase of works to increase rolling stock accommodation (the heritage carriage shed) was completed in 2017. The operational carriages will be accommodated in two new sheds, replacing the 1980s shed which can accommodate only eight carriages on two roads and which is on the wrong alignment for the new works. The new three-road shed will be capable of storing a complete WHR train set and two FR sets without splitting them (30 vehicles), while a shorter two road structure will have space for another ten vehicles. During 2017, a land reclamation scheme was put in place to create the space needed for the new carriage sheds. Managed by Whitehouse Engineering, the works entail installing a double line of sheet steel piling up to 30ft deep and 20ft apart along the FR’s boundary. Intended to act as a sea defence, the design was agreed with Natural Resources Wales, which refused to allow the construction of an armour rock embankment in continuation of the existing Cob because it would have intruded into the Lleyn Peninsular and Sarnau Special Area of Conservation. This work will be completed by the end of the year. Part of the carriage shed’s concrete floor was strengthened so that it can be used, if required, for lifting while work is carried out on the erecting shed. Total cost of the Boston Lodge development is estimated to be £4.5 million, largely funded by the FR’s Diamond Jubilee appeal, an ongoing initiative that has already raised several million pounds for developments on both the FR and WHR. The Ffestiniog Railway Society has awarded a grant covering the cost of five new sets of points required this winter. The next stage will be the construction of the three-road carriage shed on the new ground, followed by the ‘small engine’ shed. At Minffordd, the FR’s historic wagon collection was moved into the heritage wagon shed in December, moving under cover the line of disused slate wagons that have been a feature of the mineral siding, alongside the main line, at Minffordd for several years.