Talyllyn Railway

Slate quarrying began in the hills above Tywyn in the 1830s, but of the many small quarries and test levels opened, only one became a major working: Bryn Eglwys, seven miles north-east of the town. Underground working began in the early 1840s, and by 1847 the quarry was being worked by a local landowner, John Pughe. Its output was held down by an expensive transport chain: finished slate went by packhorse to the wharf at Pennal, by boat down the river to Aberdyfi, and only there into seagoing vessels. The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 cut off supplies of cotton to the mills of north-west England, and a number of prosperous mill owners looked for new business to diversify into; one was William McConnel of Lancashire, who in 1859 had bought Hengwrt Hall near Dolgellau. In January 1864 McConnel formed the Aberdovey Slate Company, which leased the land including Bryn Eglwys from its owner, Lewis Morris of Machynlleth.

McConnel set about improving Bryn Eglwys to increase its output, and he focused on providing rail transport for the isolated quarry. In April 1864 he agreed terms with local landowners for the land needed to build a railway towards Tywyn and onwards to the port of Aberdyfi, and construction was well underway by July. The standard gauge Aberystwith and Welsh Coast Railway had reached Tywyn from Machynlleth in 1863, so he built only as far as Tywyn, the nearest point at which slate could be transferred to the standard gauge, despite the line's initial isolation while the estuary of the Afon Dyfi remained unbridged. The Talyllyn Railway Act 1865, which allowed the company to operate passenger trains as a public railway, was given royal assent on 5 July 1865; it made the Talyllyn the first narrow gauge railway in Britain authorised by Act of Parliament to carry passengers using steam haulage. James Swinton Spooner was appointed engineer and laid out a relatively straight line climbing steadily from Tywyn to the quarry.

By September 1866 construction had advanced far enough for the Board of Trade inspector, Captain Henry Tyler, to make an initial inspection, and his report produced an alteration the railway has never undone. The overbridges were too narrow for the carriages to pass beneath them with the clearance the regulations required, so McConnel proposed that the doors on one side of each carriage be barred permanently and the track slewed off-centre beneath the bridges, leaving passengers able to get out on the door side if a train stopped under one. Tyler agreed, and Talyllyn carriages have had doors on one side only ever since. He also required improvements to the railway's first two locomotives, and withheld approval until his list was complete, although slate trains and unofficial passenger trains were already running in 1865. He returned to Tywyn in November 1866, re-inspected the line and approved its formal opening for passenger service. The first public passenger timetable was issued in December 1866, and the first purpose-built, steam-worked narrow gauge public railway in Britain opened for service.

The working locomotive was housed at first in a wooden shed at Ty Dwr on the mineral line above Abergynolwyn station, until the main engineering works at Pendre opened on 17 February 1867 and trains began working from there instead. Stations were provided at Pendre and Abergynolwyn at the opening, with a halt at Rhydyronen following in 1867, Dolgoch later the same year and Brynglas in 1872.

Shortly after the opening a branch was built down to Abergynolwyn village, which had been laid out to house the quarrymen of Bryn Eglwys and their families. A steep incline dropped from the mineral line east of Abergynolwyn station to the village below, carrying coal, building materials and general goods down, and hauling the contents of the village cesspits back up for disposal along the lineside. Public passenger trains at first ran only between Abergynolwyn, Dolgoch and Pendre; quarrymen were carried on unofficial trains that continued beyond Abergynolwyn to the foot of the Alltwyllt incline in the Nant Gwernol gorge. By 1880 Bryn Eglwys employed 300 workers and was producing 8,000 long tons of finished slate a year, all of it shipped by the railway, and passenger numbers rose from 11,500 carried in 1867 to over 23,000 in 1877.

In 1879 McConnel bought out the other shareholders of the Aberdovey Slate Company and became sole owner of the railway, the quarry and much of Abergynolwyn village. From the 1880s onwards the "Grand Tour" was a popular option with tourists, using charabancs to link the Talyllyn and Corris railways by way of Tal-y-llyn Lake and Cadair Idris and returning on Cambrian Railways trains. The last two decades of the century, though, saw demand for slate fall away, and Bryn Eglwys with it: by 1890 production had halved to 4,000 long tons a year. When labour disputes stopped production at Penrhyn Quarry in 1896, demand at other quarries rose temporarily, and McConnel expanded output at Bryn Eglwys to take advantage of it, but only with the aim of maximising profits over the remainder of his lease, which was to expire in 1910. He built new trial levels without proper provision for removing overburden, and pushed the limits of safe working in the existing chambers. As the lease drew towards its close no further lessee came forward, and work began on dismantling the quarry's equipment.

Bryn Eglwys was the primary employer in the Abergynolwyn district, so its closure caused significant distress. In 1910 a local landowner, Henry Haydn Jones, was elected Member of Parliament for Merioneth; he understood the quarry's importance, and at the end of the year he purchased the quarry company for just over £5,000. The quarry reopened in January 1911, though Haydn Jones had no capital to invest in it. The first workings reopened were on the Broad Vein, whose hard slate was difficult to sell, and the lack of a market forced a switch to the softer Narrow Vein. Unable to afford to open new workings into it, he resorted to the dangerous practice of narrowing the columns that supported the roofs of the underground chambers, begun under McConnel's ownership and continued throughout his own. A brief construction boom after the First World War brought production back to around 4,000 long tons a year.

The 1920s also brought an upsurge in holiday traffic as Britain recovered from the war and tourism gained in popularity. Summer passenger numbers grew significantly, and the railway regularly had to supplement its formal passenger stock with slate wagons fitted with planks for seats. One unusual service allowed tourists to hire a slate wagon, which would be left for them at Abergynolwyn; at the end of the day they returned to Tywyn in it, powered by gravity. That service was discontinued in the early 1930s. The additional income from the tourist trade defrayed some of the cost of operating the railway, but never enough for it to make a profit during Haydn Jones's ownership.

The lease on Bryn Eglwys expired in 1942 and was extended on an annual basis. Bradshaw's Guide for October 1942 shows two return passenger trains running on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays only, and nothing at all on the other days. Overnight on 26 December 1946 several of the weakened support columns gave way; the quarry was deemed unsafe and closed immediately. Haydn Jones had promised to keep the railway running as long as he was alive, and so, despite the loss of the quarry, trains continued on a shoestring budget. When the British railway system was nationalised in 1947 the Talyllyn was one of the few operating railways not included; the reasons are unclear, but all official mention of the railway had ceased several decades earlier and it is likely that the line had simply been forgotten by officialdom. Between 1947 and 1949 it ran a passenger service two days a week, and in 1949 Haydn Jones bought 10 tons of rail from the recently lifted Corris Railway. He died on 2 July 1950. Closure seemed inevitable, but the line ran on for the rest of the summer season, ending on 6 October.

The author and biographer Tom Rolt had visited the line in 1949 along with the locomotive engineer David Curwen. In the summer of 1950 Rolt wrote a letter to the Birmingham Post suggesting that a rescue of the Talyllyn be undertaken, and the response was positive enough for a meeting of interested enthusiasts to be held at the Imperial Hotel in Birmingham on 11 October 1950. Around 70 people attended, among them Patrick Whitehouse, and Rolt proposed a committee to look into acquiring the railway; with the meeting's support it met for the first time on 23 October, with Rolt as chairman and Whitehouse as secretary, and opened negotiations with Haydn Jones's executors. The transfer was legally complex: all shares in the railway company passed from the estate to a new company, Talyllyn Holdings Ltd., with two directors from the executors and two from the committee. It took place on 8 February 1951, at which point the newly formed Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society effectively took control. In 1951 the Talyllyn became the first railway in the world to be preserved as a heritage railway by volunteers.

The Society began publicising its efforts at once, hoping to raise funds and find volunteers, and by May nearly 650 members had joined. The line reopened under its control on the Whit Monday bank holiday, 14 May 1951, with trains running between Wharf and Rhydyronen; regular trains began on 4 June and continued through the summer, with Curwen acting as the first Chief Mechanical Engineer. Operating with the original rolling stock was a struggle. Dolgoch was the only working locomotive when the line was taken over and plainly needed a major overhaul, so two further steam locomotives were bought in 1951 from the recently closed Corris Railway and named Sir Haydn and Edward Thomas. Sir Haydn was the first new locomotive to travel on the line in over 80 years, but it derailed frequently, and inspection showed that the track had been laid about half an inch wider than the official gauge, a deliberate policy of the old company to accommodate Talyllyn's long wheelbase; the two original locomotives had unusually wide wheel treads that kept them on it. The fault was eventually cured by relaying the railway to its correct gauge and altering Talyllyn's trailing wheels so that they could swivel horizontally. Edward Thomas arrived unserviceable, but John Alcock, chairman of the Hunslet Engine Company, was a Society member and had it overhauled free of charge at his works; it entered service in 1952.

Through the 1950s the volunteers and staff rebuilt the line and rescued it from its state of decay, in a period characterised by a "Boy's Own comic spirit of adventure, involving enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility". A museum grew alongside the railway: the first exhibit of what became the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum at Tywyn Wharf was a locomotive donated in 1952 by Guinness from its recently closed St James's Gate Brewery railway, the Society agreed to start work on a formal museum in 1954, conversion of the old gunpowder store at Wharf station began in 1955, and the first exhibit arrived at Tywyn in 1956. On 22 May 1957 the BBC made a live outside broadcast from the railway, with Wynford Vaughan Thomas and Huw Weldon commentating on a trip from Dolgoch to Abergynolwyn; more than 57,500 passengers were carried that summer. Its reach ran wider than its passenger list: the fictional Skarloey Railway of the Rev. W. Awdry's The Railway Series was based on the Talyllyn, and its preservation inspired the Ealing comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt. Passenger journeys reached 67,000 in 1960 and 78,500 in 1964, and in the winter of 1964/65 Wharf station's track layout was improved and its original office building extended for passengers.

The Preservation Society had long held ambitions to extend the railway along the former mineral line from Abergynolwyn to the foot of the Alltwyllt incline, and as early as 1959 work had begun on tracing the owners of the land it crossed. Planning began in the mid-1960s, but construction did not start until 1968, when the winding house of the Abergynolwyn village incline was demolished. Bringing the route up to passenger standards meant easing some of the curves, which required blasting, as the line runs there on a narrow ledge on the hillside. The extension and the new station at Nant Gwernol were opened on 22 May 1976 by Wynford Vaughan Thomas, who drove in the ceremonial "golden spike"; minor work still remained before regular passenger trains could run, and those began on 29 May. Footpaths connecting to the new station followed, together with a footbridge across the Nant Gwernol gorge, opened on 3 May 1980 by Lord Parry, chairman of the Wales Tourist Board.

By the mid-1970s it had become clear that passenger numbers were no longer increasing. After 1973, the peak year with 186,000 passenger journeys, they declined consistently until the 1990s, and the railway entered a period of consolidation. A locomotive bought in 1969 from the Bord na Mona, the Irish Peat Board, and shelved in 1975 was revived in 1988 to a design by the Chief Engineer, John Bate, and entered service on 6 May 1991 under the name Tom Rolt, after the Society's first chairman. An older anomaly closed in the same period. The Regulation of Railways Act 1889 had required continuous brakes on all British passenger trains, but McConnel had secured an exemption for the Talyllyn on the grounds that its low speeds made them unnecessary and that the cost of compliance would bankrupt the enterprise; by the end of the 1990s the Railway Inspectorate was insisting that the line comply, and by 2001, a little over a century after the Act, the entire passenger fleet had been fitted.

The Society celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2001 by launching a rebuilding of Tywyn Wharf, where the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum had for years been housed in semi-permanent buildings. Work began in January 2002; in 2003 the railway received a £682,500 Heritage Lottery grant towards the £1,170,000 cost, and the new station and museum were officially opened on 13 July 2005 by Prince Charles, later King Charles III, and Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall. Passenger numbers have risen steadily since the turn of the millennium, with 95,500 passenger journeys recorded in 2006, still only around half the 1973 peak. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers gave the railway an Engineering Heritage Award in 2011 for its importance in Welsh industrial heritage, and in June 2013 it received the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service. The 150th anniversary of the official opening was marked with events through 2015. The COVID pandemic cost the railway 60 per cent of its annual revenue in 2020, and it recovered the following year to nearly match its 2019 figure. In 2021 the Slate Landscape of North-west Wales, which takes in both the Talyllyn Railway and Bryn Eglwys quarry, was designated a World Heritage Site, and the line is also a National Monument of Wales. As part of the World Heritage bid the railway formed a heritage working group to restore the water tower at Ty Dwr on the Nant Gwernol extension, completed in 2022. The original 1860s locomotives and passenger stock still run regularly, and the line is promoted as one of the Great Little Trains of Wales, a joint marketing scheme launched in 1970 covering ten narrow gauge railways. In 2024 a standard gauge wagon was positioned beside the transshipment siding at Tywyn Wharf, to demonstrate how slates were once transferred from narrow gauge to standard gauge.