Steam dreams in North Wales

Two of Britain’s most revered heritage railways can be combined in a long journey through magnificent scenery, with castles, quarries and mountains as an unsurpassed backdrop.

With the possible exception of the Himalayas, there’s nowhere in the world more renowned for narrow-gauge steam than North Wales. This Celtic heartland is home to a profusion of preserved locomotives, from the rather diminutive to the positively tiny, a little fleet which whistles and wheezes about the landscapes charming children and trainspotters alike.

Some skirt lakes, others race seaside promenades, one or two scale mountains or rattle under castle battlements. The Welsh Highland and Ffestiniog Railways do all the above. Combine the two, and over a day you can travel about 62km to the soundtrack of chuffing locomotives and rattling rails.

The journey starts in Caernarfon, in the shadow of one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval castles. Its 13th century octagonal towers stand in sharp contrast to the clean, modern lines of the station. Then again, this terminus of the Welsh Highland Railway (WHR) is a relatively recent addition to the town — the 40km of track stretching south were only fully laid in 2011. The Welsh Highland line is a modern reimagining of an older railway of the same name that existed in the 1920s, which closed when the local slate industry collapsed (and travellers opted to take quicker buses instead). Speed is not a priority for passengers these days, as my service toots to announce its snail-pace departure from Caernarfon.

Soon the towers of the castle retreat behind us and the train rolls into the Arcadian Gwyrfai Valley, the massif of Yr Wyddfa (also known as Snowdon) rising to the left, and the treacherous spine of Nantlle Ridge just visible to the right through plumes of steam. Narrow-gauge railways are common in North Wales — owing to the topography, smaller engines can more deftly navigate inclines, descents and tight curves. This is soon very evident. After a halt at Rhyd Ddu (a trailhead for hikers ascending Yr Wyddfa), the train slaloms through conifer forests and zigzags down the contours into the heart of Beddgelert, arguably the prettiest village in the area.

Here, among stone pubs and dapper tearooms, the train meets its companion, the River Glaslyn, whose course it will race downstream all the way to Porthmadog. It's the stretch from Beddgelert that is perhaps the most glorious, the train barging through a series of tunnels, re-emerging in a narrow canyon flanked by invasive rhododendrons, with the ghostly wreckage of old copper mines littering the summits above. It is summer and there are swimmers bathing in the shallow pools of the river, while others hop over the steppingstones. The sudden cool of the tunnels provides welcome respite from the heat.

The port of Porthmadog is soon announced by the cry of seagulls. The rails of the Welsh Highland Railway briefly and bizarrely trespass on a major road, before coming to a halt by the harbour. Here, many passengers disembark to take pictures of the mighty Garratt engines that have hauled them over the hills. What catches the eye, however, are the distinctive Fairlie locomotives — a Frankenstein’s monster of a machine, with boilers at both ends. These locomotives are the signature of the Welsh Highlands compatriot, the Ffestiniog Railway now part of the same company and using the same station at Porthmadog, albeit with a very different history.

The Ffestiniog Railway was originally a horse and gravity operation, built to connect the slate mines at Blaenau Ffestiniog to waiting ships at Porthmadog, from where the slate would be exported to rooftops around the world. Wagons would roll downhill under gravity, before noble steeds would clip-clop uphill, dragging the empty wagons behind them. It was in 1863, some 30 years after its inception, that steam engines arrived on the Ffestiniog Railway; soon after, passenger services followed.

Unlike the Welsh Highland Railway, the Ffestiniog segued from a working line to a heritage operation with very little hiatus in the late 1950s.

Today, travelling aboard its restored rolling stock, you get an intimate sense of what it was like riding the line in its Victorian heyday. Simple, no-frills quarrymen’s coaches are the authentic choice, but ride the luxury Pullman-style carriages with plush armchairs and cups of tea clinking on linen-clad tables and you might imagine yourself a top-hatted director of the line.

Departing Porthmadog, the Ffestiniog Railway service huffs across the Cob, a man-made embankment shored against the shifting sands of the Mawddach Estuary, with the pyramidal peak of Cnicht bearing down from the east. It’s after passing the railway works at Boston Lodge that the hills close in, the line passing through thick woodlands before creaking to a stop at the midway station of Tan-Y-Bwlch. Fans of railway engineering delight as the train ascends the Dduallt spiral — the only railway spiral in the United Kingdom. Very soon forests turn to wind-whipped moorlands, the mood turns more sombre and the immense wreckage of slate workings loom, Mordor-like, beyond the Tanygrisiau Reservoir. Their leviathan forms provide a poignant reminder of the genesis of this line and, to a degree, of the Welsh Highland Railway, too.

Today, both lines are busy with happy day-trippers, but the iron rails were once laid to steal the heart out of these mountains.

Workers hacked away at strata with sinew and pick and dynamite, many losing their lives to extract slate that found its way to buildings around the world. Gazing up at the spoil heaps from a train arriving into Blaenau Ffestiniog is a moving experience. The railways help keep the memory of this industry and those labourers alive.

 

The details

Start/Finish:  Caernarfon/Blaenau Ffestiniog

Distance:  61km

Duration:  5hr 30min (dependent on a change at Porthmadog)

Ticket types:  Seat options on the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways vary according to the particular train, but broadly include standard class and first class, the latter subdivided into Pullman and Observation coaches.

Food and drink are available on some departures, including cream teas with Welsh cakes.

How to book:  Book direct for both railways at festrail.co.uk

Things to know:  Be aware that not all routes cover the length of the line: on the Ffestiniog Railway, the Woodland Wanderer makes a return trip from Porthmadog only as far as Tan-y-Bwlch, while on the Welsh Highland, the Gelert Explorer runs from Caernarfon to Beddgelert.

 

The book

Epic Train Trips of the World by Lonely Planet, RRP $55.