Virtual Railfan Tour UK - Ffestiniog Railway (part one)

Porthmadog Harbour station.
There is a lot to see on the Ffestiniog Railway so today we will just go from Porthmadog to Rhiw Goch today and will continue on to Blaenau Ffestiniog later. First a note about the spelling.  The line, which dates back to 1805, was originally incorporated as the Ffestiniog Railway. The double "ff" is pronounced "f" in Welsh whereas "f" is pronounced "v".  At some time, the name was changed legally to Festiniog Railway by act of parliament. The line from Porthmadog to Blaenau Ffestiniog was closed after the second world war but was revived in sections by a preservation society beginning in the early 1950s. I first visited in 1958 when the line was only open as far as Tan y Bwlch.

Porthmadog (originally Portmadoc) signal box 

The diagrem shows the present layout with the Ffestiniog railway stub end sidings and platform curving down and the Welsh Highland Railway connection at the top

Porthmadog harbour at low tide

There is a lever frame with small levers

And a token instrument

Blanche is a modified quarry locomotive which was acquired in the early preservation period to provide additional motive power.

We have the road so we will take off over the Cobb to Boston Lodge works. This is a Welsh Highland Garratt No. 143, of which more later.

On the way the views of the Welsh mountains are superb.

Boston Lodge works, A great deal of repair work is done here as well as locomotive preparation


A double Fairlie is being prepared

These locomotives have two fireboxes, two boilers, two sets of cylinders, two throttles/regulators

This shows the amount of space the fireman has - about 18 inches. He dare not lean out of the cab when in motion because the clearances are very tight indeed

Paul is standing in the full width area available.

From Boston Lodge we make our way to Minffordd. This is a special trip behind Taliesin,a single Fairlie built new which has a standard cab with a little more room to move.

No. 2 Prince was built in 1865 and is the oldes locomotive in operating condition in the world. Paul and i both rode the footplate/cab - more about this later.

The boat at Minffordd

Taliesin takes us on to Rhiw Goch, a block post which is only opened at busy times

Rhiw has mechanical interlocking frame


While waiting for the road we watch a down train hauled by a double Fairlie exchange tokens at Rhiw Goch



















 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Wednesday - Zurich Hauptbahnhof Part One

Image
Zurich Hauptbahnhof  Paul has prepared some extensive notes and photos of the Zurich Hauptbahnhof.  This will be in several parts.  The busiest station in Switzerland is Zurich Hauptbahnhof (Zurich HB) which is used primarily by the SBB. It has 26 tracks serving almost 3000 trains daily and it is one of the busiest stations in the world. It was built in the 1870s and is a main shopping destination as well as a transport hub. There are three levels for platforms and the "Shopville" shopping plaza.  The river Sihl river passes right through the station with platforms passing above and below the river. This shows the general layout of the station with the surrounding tram tracks shown in purple Tracks 3 to 18 are terminal tracks located at ground level, served by two side platforms and seven island platforms. These are used by long-distance trains from throughout Switzerland, and by international trains. Tracks 21 and 22 are underground terminal tracks, served by a sing...
Read more

Coming Home - Wrap Up - Sunday 15 Setember 2024

Image
This video, by Noel Wyler,  shows what we have just missed. Last Saturday (14 September) the Oensingen Balsthal  Railway organized an event to commemorate 60 years of the Re 4/4 locomotives. They brought together 24 of them and ran them as one train. Paul and I flew home on KLM from Schiphol Airport. We took a train from Den Haag directly to the airport. The trip back was marred by a couple with a young boy who was obviously teething. He cried almost continuously for the full six hours. I found I could tune him out when I dug deep into the KLM sound system and found a treasure trove of classical music. Bach violin concertos, Mozart piano concerto No. 23, Beethoven symphonies, Schuman etc. We survived the stupidities at the entrance of the Montreal airport and caught the KLM bus back to Ottawa where we arrived precisely on time. A good ending to a wonderful, tremendous, trip  
Read more

Travel Basel to Den Haag - Wednesday 11 September

Image
  A Dutch speciality - pancake with cheese, mushrooms and bacon. This was the only picture I took today - after we had finally arrived at Den Haag. We went early to the station at Basel  to check on our train to Dusseldorf only to find out it had been cancelled. A visit to the SBB ticket office revealed that the train hadn't actually been cancelled but was starting today from Karlsruhe. They found a connecting train leaving a little earlier which we took. This became progressively later and later so that it arrived at Karlsruhe just as the connection was about to pull out. A frantic dash across the platform and we were able to claim our seats. The journey to Dusseldorf was peculiar, There were periods when the train went fast (up to almost 200 kmph) and other periods when it dawdled. It progressively lost time except that it arrived at its final destination, Dusseldorf, eleven minutes early. (An injudicious use of recovery time in the schedule?) Dusseldorf gave us an opportuni...
Read more