FROM TINY ACORNS…
Seven decades ago, could the band of enthusiasts who planned to pull off a world first by taking over a dying narrow gauge railway ever have envisaged in their wildest dreams that in a future national emergency, the Government would see fit to spend more than £10 million on keeping 43 similar ventures alive? As the Talyllyn Railway prepares to celebrate its 70th anniversary, Robin Jones looks back at the little line that started it all…
In 2020, there are more than 150 operational heritage railways in the UK, running services over nearly 600 miles of track, with almost 500 stations. They welcome more than 13 million visitors every year, and not only are they valuable cultural and educational amenities, but they contribute around £400 million to the national economy. Planks of many a local tourist economy, they provide 4000 full-time equivalent jobs, supported by an army of 22,000 volunteers. Mighty oaks indeed!
Yet each one of our heritage lines owe a massive debt of gratitude to the pioneers who saw fit to give up their spare time to travel to the coast of central Wales to save a little-known 2ft 3in gauge line from closure.
Yes, the Talyllyn Railway is tiny in comparison to the likes of the North Yorkshire Moors, West Somerset, Severn Valley, Bluebell and Great Central railways, but where would any of these magnificent lines be today if the defining seed of the volunteer-led heritage sector had not been planted in Tywyn in 1951?
I have little doubt that a heritage revivalist movement would have started in Britain at some stage, such was the level of enthusiasm for railways among the general population. Yet if it had not started back then, who knows what might have been lost in the years that followed?
The Talyllyn story of course does not begin in 1951, when the volunteers began running public services, but in the local slate industry.
Origins
In 1843, a slate quarry opened at Bryn Eglwys, in the lofty heights above the village of Abergynolwyn. The slate was carried by packhorse to the wharf at Pennal, transferred to boats for a river trip to Aberdyfi (Aberdovey) and was loaded onto ships, a complicated procedure which limited the quarry’s output.
With Lancashire textile manufacturers looking for new ways of making money following the outbreak of the American Civil War, which cut off supplies of cotton, the lease of the quarry was bought in 1861 by the
McConnells family of Manchester, who then sought a more cost-effective way to swiftly transport the slate. They looked at existing narrow gauge railways like the Ffestiniog and Corris, which has been designed and built purely to carry slate, with passenger traffic being introduced later.
The standard gauge Aberystwyth & Welsh Coast Railway, later part of the Cambrian Railways main line and subsequently the Great Western Railway, reached Tywyn in 1963, so McConnell decided to build his line from the quarry to Tywyn, the nearest point where slate could be transferred to the standard gauge railway.
James Swinton Spooner, whose father had designed and built the Festiniog Railway and whose brother had introduced steam locomotives to it, was commissioned to draw up plans for the new railway. However, this one was to be different from the others that had gone before, in that from the outset it was intended to carry both passengers and freight.
Building of the Tayllyn Railway began
in 1864, and under the terms of an Act of Parliament passed on July 5, 1865, a passenger railway was laid between Tywyn and Abergynolwyn with a goods- only extension to what is now Nant Gwernol. From the terminus, three cable- hauled inclines took wagons up to and down from the quarry, and there was also a cable- worked incline down to Abergynolwyn village, which very usefully kept the residents supplied with coal.
Rolling stock
Two new locomotives were ordered and built by Fletcher Jennings of Whitehaven, and were delivered to Tywyn in 1864 and 1866. They were an 0- 4- 2ST, No. 1 Talyllyn, and No. 2 Dolgoch, an 0- 4- 0WT. Four carriages and a guards van were also built, along with several wagons.
Captain Henry Tyler from the Board of Trade inspected the line in September 1866 and made several recommendations, one being that carriage doors should only open on one side because of the tight clearances. This unusual state of affairs remains the case today.
In October 1866, the railway began an unofficial passenger service, despite not being authorised by the Board of Trade and with passengers being carried ‘ at their own risk’ and possibly free of charge until the line was officially sanctioned. In November that year, Capt Tyler reinspected the railway, following which he approved its formal opening for passenger service.
The first public passenger timetable was issued in December 1866 and the first purposebuilt, steam- worked, narrow gauge public railway in Britain opened for service. There were stations at Pendre and Abergynolwyn with the halt at Rhydyronen opening in 1867, followed by Brynglas and Dolgoch Falls in 1873.
The 2ft 3in gauge was shared by only three other public railways in Britain: its ‘ sister line’ the Corris Railway, the subsequent but short- lived Plynlimon & Hafan Tramway at nearby Talybont and the Campbeltown & Machrihanish Light Railway which crossed the Mull of Kintyre.
The Talyllyn proved a success in its early years, helping the quarry expand production greatly, and by 1880, Bryn Eglwys employed 300 workers and was producing 8000 tons of finished slate per year – all exported via the little railway. Passenger traffic was also substantial, rising from 11,500 passengers carried in 1867 to more than 23,000 in 1877.
Late Victorian times saw more and more of the new breed of tourists, wealthier families with more leisure time on their hands, discover the delights of mid- Wales, and used charabancs to bridge the gap taking in the Talyllyn and Corris railways via Tal- y- llyn Lake and Cadair Idris, returning via the Cambrian main line.
Decline
However, in the 1880s, demand for slate declined and brought hardships to many smaller quarries like Bryn Eglwys, where production slumped to 4000 tons by 1890.
Despite a brief flurry of demand in 1896 when strike action at Penrhyn Quarry in North Wales led to a new lease of life for smaller quarries elsewhere, and added investment by McConnell, the overall downward trend continued, and when his lease on Bryn Eglwys ended in 1910, nobody seemed willing to take it on.
Many families in the locality faced ruin because of the closure of the quarry. Happily, a benefactor was found in the form of local
landowner Henry Haydn Jones, who bought the company in 1910, the same year he became Liberal MP for Merioneth.
He reopened the quarry in January 1911, but had no money to invest in it, and it had to rely on producing the harder- to- sell hard slate from the broad vein, while resorting to the dangerous practice of narrowing the columns that supported the roofs of the underground chambers of the narrow vein, which was comprised of the more marketable soft slate.
The national housebuilding boom following the First World War saw slate production rise to around 4000 tons a year, while the growing tourist market saw summer passenger levels rise to the point where slate wagons with planks of wood fitted to form crude bench seats were pressed into service to cope with demand.
An unusual tourist service offered by the railway in the Twenties and early Thirties was the hire of a slate wagon, which would be left at Abergynolwyn by an inbound train. At the end of the day, the tourists would return to Tywyn in the wagon, powered by gravity. This service was discontinued in the early 1930s.
Haydn Jones persevered with the railway, even though it never made a profit during his years in charge. Bryn Eglwys quarry finally closed in 1946 when the weakened columns in the narrow vein collapsed and it was deemed unsafe.
Survival
Nonetheless, Haydn Jones vowed to continue operating the railway as long as he was alive and a timetable continued to operate on a hand- to- mouth budget, although it was becoming clear that the locomotives and stock needed attention and the track and infrastructure were fighting a losing battle against decay and the onset of nature.
When Britain’s railways were nationalised on January 1, 1948, the Talyllyn was one of the few operating lines not included – probably because it was all but forgotten by those in high office. However, other eyes were watching from afar.
In 1929, efforts to save Suffolk’s 3ft gauge Southwold Railway attracted the attention of the national press, and had they been successful, it is likely that it would have been Britain’s first heritage line.
Indeed, the idea of running railways purely for pleasure or tourism purposes had by then been well established. Sir Arthur Heywood had a 15in gauge line built on his Duffield Bank estate in Derbyshire in 1874, with the idea of selling it to a wider audience and in 1895 he built a similar system at Eaton Hall for the Duke of Westminster.
Wenman Joseph Bassett- Lowke, the most famous modelmaker of the early 20th century, and miniature locomotive engineer Henry Greenly formed a company, Miniature Railways of Great Britain, in 1904, to develop such lines. The derelict 3ft gauge Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway in the Lake District was converted to 15in gauge and operated by miniature steam locomotives in 1915, and the 2ft gauge Fairbourne Railway to the north of Tywyn followed suit a year later.
These cannot in their day be described as ‘ heritage’ lines, because they were merely scale replicas or types based on contemporary stateof- the- art main line locomotives.
There is the train of thought that the idea of volunteers taking over an existing railway and running it as such, without alteration, was planted in the letters column of the January 1941 issue of The Modern Tramway, the journal of the Light Railway Transport League.
Headed ‘ An Interesting Suggestion’, Manchester reader Arthur E Rimmer, concerned at the Welsh Highland Railway’s imminent prospect of having its track lifted for the war effort, wrote that the line, which closed to passengers in 1936 and freight the year afterwards, had proved its value during the First World War in carrying timber and slate, while a passenger service could be reintroduced to save petrol supplies.
If the reinstatement of the Welsh Highland on commercial grounds was found to be not possible, he continued, would it be practicable for clubs and societies supplying free labour to tackle such a scheme?
Principle
Owen Prosser, one of the founders of the Talyllyn Preservation Society, once told Heritage Railway: “That established a principle of fundamental importance. As far as I know, it had never been suggested before.”
In the next edition, Birmingham solicitor Stanley Keyse ( who later orchestrated the purchase of the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway from British Railways) said that
“the line with careful management could be profitably operated for tourist passenger traffic, at any rate on the section between Beddgelert and Aberglaslyn.”
He added: “Efforts will be made to reopen this necessary and picturesque railway and such efforts will be crowned with success.”
Owen Prosser then wrote to Minister of Transport JTC ( later Lord) Moore- Brabazon in support of the Welsh Highland, who pointed out that the Welsh Highland had run at a loss since its opening in 1923. So that was that: the Welsh Highland was lifted, and Owen joined the Royal Navy after being called up in 1942.
However, on September 2, 1949, an anonymous letter appeared in The Birmingham Post, headlined “Breakdown on Talyllyn Railway.” The writer said that No. 2 Dolgoch, by then the line’s sole operative locomotive, had suffered a fractured frame and had to be withdrawn from service, leading to the then two- days- a- week passenger service being suspended – and therefore the end was in sight.
A reply in the newspaper’s letters column came on September 9 from renowned transport author Tom Rolt, who just two years earlier had taken physical steps to stop the Great Western Railway from effectively closing the northern section of the Stratfordupon- Avon Canal, by insisting to exercise his right of passage at a decaying lock in King’s Norton.
Tom Rolt congratulated the writer, but disagreed with his demand that the
Government or British Railways should step in to save the Talyllyn from closure.
Instead, Tom argued, it was a “sorry symptom of the decline of individual initiative at the present time” that people said ‘ why don’t they do something about it?’ rather than getting stuck in themselves.
Owen Prosser wrote to Tom and said that the best medium for success in saving the Talyllyn would be a voluntary society, supplying both cash and free labour.
Individuality
In his reply on September 22, Tom said: “Whether or not we agree with the nationalisation of our railways, we have to admit that the policy must result in an increasing loss of individuality. This inevitable process of standardisation will focus public interest to an increasing extent upon a small historic and highly- individual concern such as the Talyllyn Railway.”
He was right, but by then, he had already done much to set the wheels of transport preservation in progress.
Born on February 11, 1910, Tom trained as an engineer, initially apprenticed to steam locomotive manufacturer Kerr Stuart Ltd in
Stoke- on- Trent from 1926. He later became part- owner of the Phoenix Green garage on the A30 in Hampshire. This became a focal point for owners of sports cars, and in 1935 Tom was active in founding the Vintage Sports Car Club.
In the late 1930s, he converted a narrow boat, Cressy, into a floating home and cruised the English canals, telling the story of his voyages in his landmark book Narrow Boat.
In so many ways Cressy was the precursor of today’s canal cruising boats. Its on- board bath was famous throughout the canal network at a time when living conditions for boatmen and their families was primitive in the extreme. In August 1945, he had a meeting with Robert Aickman at which they decided to found the Inland Waterways Association to campaign for the retention of the canal network, at a time when so many sections were being closed due to lack of trade. He correctly foresaw a more affluent age when pleasure boating would become a significant part of canal traffic.
Before the letter appeared in The Birmingham Post, Tom was aware of the crisis facing the Talyllyn. He had visited it during the Second World War, but when he arrived at Tywyn Wharf a handwritten sign greeted him
saying “no train today”. Therefore, he decided to walk to Abergynolwyn along the track to the workshops at Pendre, where he found that the only operational locomotive was being repaired by a frustrated engineer.
Tom returned to Tywyn in 1949 with fellow railway enthusiast Bill Trinder, who owned a radio shop in Banbury and met with Sir Henry Haydn Jones.
On July 2, 1950 Sir Henry died and closure of the Talyllyn Railway seemed inevitable, but it continued to operate for the remainder of the summer season, ending on October 6.
Railway revolution
Tom had by then already been preparing a plan of action. He called a public meeting on October 11, at the Imperial Hotel in Birmingham, to consider the future of the Talyllyn Railway, and 36 people turned up, electing a committee, which met for the first time on October 23. Then, Owen’s suggestion of the name for the new body, the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society, was formally adopted.
The members were risking the ridicule of friends and family, for what on earth was the point?
In 1950, there was no immediate threat to steam traction on the national network or the prospect of wholesale closures of large swathes of it; Dr Beeching was many years in the future, the motor car had not yet become undisputed king and the British Railways Modernisation Plan, which called for total dieselisation and electrification was still five years away. Britannia class Pacific No. 70000 Britannia, the first of what would be 999 British Standard locomotives, would not appear for another year. The new society’s actions might well have been deemed akin to preserving an example of a brand- new mass- produced car straight out of a showroom purely for historical purposes. Yet by May 1950, nearly 650 members had joined the Talyllyn society.
Madness? Certainly not, if you have experienced the charms of the Afon Fathew valley and its little bespoke railway!
Through the generosity of Sir Haydn’s widow, the society was effectively given the line in February 1951 – and members ran their first train on May 14, 1951, with initial services running between Tywyn Wharf and Rhydyronen. Regular trains began to run on June 4 and continued through the summer.
So history was made by a man who had made a living through writing about it: Tom was especially known for his biographies of the lives of famous engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
He became the railway’s general manager for the first two years of society operation and he told the story in his book Railway Adventure.
The early preservationists faced many uphill struggles. As they had known, Dolgoch was in desperate need of a major overhaul, but Talyllyn was not operational.
Therefore, they turned to the Corris Railway, which had been closed by British Railways shortly after Nationalisation. Two further steam locomotives, Nos. 3 and 4, were purchased from the Corris, along with a substantial amount of track in 1951 and named Sir Haydn and Edward Thomas respectively. Edward Thomas, incidentally, had been one of the railway’s longest- serving staff members, who joined it in 1897 at the age of 17 and continued to be employed until 1950. They became the first ‘ new’ Talyllyn locomotives for nearly 90 years.
Birmingham engineering firm Abelsons Ltd donated 1918- built Barclay 0- 4- 0WT Douglas, which had been built for the RAF Calshot depot railway, and became Talyllyn No 6.
The takeover of the Talyllyn by volunteers was the inspiration for the 1953 Ealing Studios comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt, about a group of villagers attempting to run a service on a disused branch line after closure.
The railway took off as a definitive centre for railway preservation, and in 1956, the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum was set up in an old gunpowder store at Tywyn Wharf.
Narrow gauge items from far and wide were collected in the wake of the arrival of the first exhibit, Spence, an unusual 0- 4- 0T donated in 1952 by Guinness from its recently- closed St James’s Gate Brewery railway in Dublin.
On May 22, 1957 the BBC produced a live outside broadcast from the railway, during which Wynford Vaughan Thomas and Huw Weldon commentated on a trip from Dolgoch
Falls to Abergynolwyn. Publicity arising from this broadcast, which helped place the railway firmly on the modern tourist map, drew substantial numbers of visitors to the railway that summer, with more than 57,500 passengers carried. The extra revenue in turn enabled the railway to continue to improve its infrastructure, and in 1958, No. 1 Talyllyn returned to steam after a major overhaul.
Another early member of the society was also to have a resounding impact on the future of railway preservation, although less intentionally than Tom Rolt.
The Reverend Wilbert Awdry, creator of Thomas the Tank Engine, worked as a volunteer guard in the 1950s.
Inspiration
On his fictional Island of Sodor he created the Skarloey Railway, a narrow gauge line which runs from Crovan’s Gate to Skarloey, beyond which a mineral extension serves a slate quarry. Indeed, the Skarloey Railway is based more or less directly on the Talyllyn, and is run by a thin controller, a narrow version of the standard gauge Fat Controller!
The Thomas books inspired many generations of youngsters and later became the basis of a £ 1 billion international brand of toys, TV series, a film and other merchandise. Days Out with Thomas events are held by many heritage railways, and are a major crowdpuller and revenue generator. The Talyllyn has often run No. 6 Douglas in the guise of the identical Duncan.
Passenger numbers increased to 78,500 in 1964, and following a major upgrade of the workshops at Tywyn Pendre, it built new coaches to cater for demand.
It became clear that more locomotives were needed. In 1969, a 3ft gauge Barclay 0- 4- 2T was bought from the Irish Peat Board. At first it was appropriately nicknamed Irish Pete, but eventually, after regauging and extensive reconstruction with many new parts, it emerged from the workshops in 1991 as No. 7 Tom Rolt.
It was Tom who came up with the idea not only of preserving the railway, but also of extending, bringing the Nant Gwernol mineral extension to the foot of the
Alltwyllt incline into passenger use. Planning for this project began in 1960, but building work did not begin until 1968 when the winding house for the Abergynolwyn village incline was demolished.
The mineral extension, which runs on a narrow ledge on the hillside spectacularly overlooking the village below, had to be relaid, with part of the cutting side blasted away to allow the curves to be eased sufficiently to allow coaches to safely run over the line.
The extension and new station at Nant Gwernol were opened on May 22, 1976 by Wynford Vaughan Thomas who drove in the ceremonial “golden spike”, and regular services to the new terminus began a week later.
A series of footpaths leading from the new station up the old quarry incline and across a new footbridge spanning the Nant Gwernol gorge were created and officially opened on May 3, 1980 by Lord Parry, the chairman of the Wales Tourist Board.
President
Meanwhile, from 1965- 70, Tom Rolt became involved in the Bath Conferences on Industrial Archaeology and the University of Bath. These led to the establishment of the Association for Industrial Archaeology at a conference on the Isle of Man in 1973.
Tom was its first president until his untimely death a few months later in May 1974.
Just before he died, the university awarded him an honorary degree for his work in this field, and a Rolt Fellowship was established to encourage senior engineers and retired professionals to undertake research on the history of technology. The annual Rolt Lecture was set up by the association in his memory in September 1975.
After peaking around the 80,000 mark in 1973, the railway’s passenger numbers began to fall. The decline in popularity of Wales as a summer holiday destination was a prime cause, largely as a result of cheap Mediterranean package holidays, and also by then, many other heritage railways were operating throughout the country.
The preservation society celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2001, and launched a £ 1,170,000 project to extend visitor facilities at Tywyn Wharf. With the aid of a £ 682,500 Heritage Lottery Fund grant, a new twostorey building to house the museum and an extension to the existing station building to house a new cafe and booking office were officially opened by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall on July 13, 2005.
On February 11, 2010, a special exhibition in the museum to mark the exact centenary of the birth of Tom Rolt was opened by his widow, Mrs Sonia Rolt. Afterwards, she travelled on a special VIP train to Nant Gwernol hauled by No. 4 Sir Haydn, with No. 7 Tom Rolt in steam in the yard at Tywyn Wharf accompanied by Dolgoch. Sadly, Sonia, who was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2010 for her own services to industrial archaeology and heritage, passed away on October 22, 2014 at the age of 94.
Sixty- nine years after launching their first services and the operational preservation movement, Talyllyn staff and volunteers have been faced with what could well be their biggest- ever challenge – the coronavirus pandemic and the potentially-devastating impact of loss of revenue from lockdown closure.
In common with other heritage lines, the Talyllyn organised its own public appeal to cover overheads at a dire time when no income was forthcoming.
As we closed for press, the appeal at www. justgiving. com/ campaign/ talyllyn- appeal2020 has raised nearly £ 120,000 towards its £ 150,000 target.
Services resumed on August 1, after the railway had implemented strict social distancing measures both on its trains and at its stations and cafes, and which have been applauded by travelling customers. Train services are now pre- booked only, with compartments seating up to six people sold at a fixed price rather than individual tickets.
Passenger uptake has been highly positive in the circumstances, with the railway appearing to benefit from the closure of other tourist attractions in the region. The Narrow Gauge Railway Museum has also reopened.
In the week before we closed for press, general manager Stuart Williams revealed that ticket sales were 8% up on the same period last October, with 33% more revenue across the board. However, those figures are still a long way from making up the shortfall for the loss of the spring and early summer season.
Nonetheless, the railway has extended its 2020 running season in view of the current upsurge in autumn demand – but because of the lockdown announced by the Welsh Government on October 19, it must close from October 23 until November 9. However, as we closed for press, pre- booked services were planned to resume on November 9, and run until November 29. It is also hoped to run a series of Tinsel and Turkey trains before Christmas and maybe some Santa specials, provided the latest Covid- 19 restrictions permit. Visit www. talyllyn. co. uk or telephone 01654 710472 for further details.
Furthermore, it is planned to start the 2021 season as early as February 1. The Talyllyn began the movement in 1951, and is trying its best to lead the way again!
Anniversary
May 14, of course, will be the Big One – the 70th anniversary of Tom Rolt & Co’s first volunteer services which introduced the concept of heritage railways to an unsuspecting and very grateful world. Just as Wales unveiled the steam locomotive to the world with Richard Trevithick’s first public run on the Penydarren Tramroad in 1804, so the principality gave the globe a somewhat different railway package 147 years later, and it too lasted the test of time.
A special event, the ‘ Corris Swap’ is planned for May and June, when former resident No. 4 Edward Thomas will revisit its sister line in exchange for 2005- built replica No. 7.
Next year’s Warley National Model Railway Show at the National Exhibition Centre will see the Tywyn museum display no less than the Rev Awdry’s layout, together with a celebration of 70 years of preservation.