Llanberis locos, and the rented workshop
The Llanberis Lake Railway has relied on its three quarry Hunslets for its half-century of operation, but they have not been the only locos based at the line.
‘Dolbadarn’, named after a local castle, hauled the first services from 1971, and was joined a year later by ‘Red Damsel’ and in 1988 by ‘Wild Aster’. Both followed the Dinorwic tradition of naming locos after racehorses and both lost their names in LLR ownership – Red Damsel became ‘Elidir’, a name for the Dinorwic mountain but also previously carried by an Avonside 0-4-0T that worked at the quarry. Wild Aster became ‘Thomas Bach’, and gained a bright blue paint job reminiscent of a certain children’s favourite loco...
In truth none of these locos are quite what they appear to be. Dinorwic was notorious for swapping parts between engines to keep them running and they are all to some extent hybrids – when stripped for rebuild by the fledgling LLR operation Red Damsel’s parts were found to be stamped with numbers belonging to at least eight different locos...
As related in the main text ‘Maid Marian’ also ran for a short time at Llanberis before going to the Bala Lake Railway. This loco was in 1973 briefly the first original-condition engine, in other words cabless, to run on the LLR before a cab was fitted.
As the Maid headed to Bala in 1975, in the opposite direction came ‘Helen Kathryn’, a Henschel 0-4-0T (28035/1948). This engine remained on the line until 1991 when it moved to the South Tynedale Railway where it remains today.
Then there were the locomotives of Hills & Bailey Ltd. Virtually as the LLR got going Tony Hills set up an engineering workshop in the shed formerly occupied by Padarn Railway locomotive ‘Fire Queen’, which had departed to the industrial museum further north at Penrhyn Castle.
Several locos passed through the Hills & Bailey workshop including Jung 0-4-0T ‘Cyclops’ (7509/1937) which occasionally ran on the LLR – today it is stored at Strumpshaw Hall in Norfolk. Others included Hunslets ‘Sybil’ and ‘Una’ – today Una remains at Llanberis but in the ownership of the National Slate Museum where it is occasionally steamed. Curiously while a typical quarry Hunslet, this loco never worked at Dinorwic but at Pen-yr-Orsedd quarry further north.
Other residents included Kerr Stuart ‘Diana’, today owned by Phil Mason and a favourite visitor to many lines but then in almost derelict condition, while even the Welsh Highland Railway’s familiar Hunslet 2-6-2T ‘Russell’ spent some time in the shadow of Dinorwic mountain. But Tony Hills was looking for a place to build his own line at the same time as the Central Electricity Generating Board was keen to snap up any spare buildings at Gilfach Ddu, and in the mid 1970s he transferred his operation to Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales, establishing the Brecon Mountain Railway.