Trains and steam and mountains

Today we wandered into Porthmadog (we're staying just outside it, in Tremadog) and bordered the Ffestiniog Railway, heading for Blaenau Ffestiniog.

On the way up we rode the David Lloyd George; on the way back down, we rode:

... which is the Welsh name for Merlin Ambrosius, you unlettered people.

The train goes quite high into the mountains, I think; there were certainly some points where we could see out into the valley, and it looked a long way down. I'm fairly sure we saw a nuclear power station in the distance. We spent about two hours in Ffestiniog, wandering the main street and having lunch (as well as slate, I am now in love with Welsh rarebit).

Back at the station, James had the opportunity to chat with the driver and the fireman of the engine, and have a sticky at the (very small, exceptionally hot) footplate and firebox. It's unusual in that the footplate, where the fireman stands, is side-on: the engines on this line are all double-ended, which makes switching ends a whole lot easier, but it means the engine is split down the middle by the boiler. The engines are short, but they're powerful. The fireman has to shovel coal out onto the floor, then open the door of the firebox (without burning his legs), and then shovel in the coal. And I'm pretty sure that the guys running it today are volunteers. Also, the trains on the line - which was of course originally All About the Slate - were in the Olde Days pulled up by horses and then went down courtesy of Gravity. Then, a man whose name I have forgotten wanted to test out his new idea for engines - these double-ended ones - and because it worked so well, he let them make more for this line without charging royalties. Nice!

Anyway, we saw a lot of this:


This area is very different from the landscape we saw on the Welsh Highland Railway - this is much more lush, with very few outcrops of rock until you get right up to Ffestiniog... and even there the town is dominated by slate slag heaps, not by natural outcrops.

We opted not to take the rather expensive tour of a working slate mine, today, given how good the free one had been.

And finally, because I am proud of having taken them out the window and because Too Many Trains is Never Enough (right, Willski?):