Little Trains to Faraway Places

4. Wales: Really Narrow (1987)

• wales . really narrow I n central Wales, a beautiful land of lush valleys andrugged,rock-ribbedseacoast,oldwayslingeredon.Thescaleof   buildings and machinery remained intimate and human. Once the economy of Wales had been based largely on what could be carved from the earth, primarily coal in the south and slate further north. When I visited in August 1987, however, the Welsh economy was based instead on mining the wallets of the many tourists drawn there by the region’s remarkable scenery and fascinating antiquities, among them a handful of narrow-gauge steam railways widely promoted as the “Great Little Trains of Wales.” Among these lines, the Talyllyn Railway owns a very particular distinction that raises it above its fellows. It was the first railway in Britain, and perhaps the first anywhere, saved from abandonment and kept in operation by volunteers. Thus it has two histories: first as a gritty slate-hauler and player in the Industrial Revolution and second as a pioneering preserved line, a model formanythatwouldfollowinBritain,America,andelsewhere.Asapreserved railroad, it has its own impressive history. The Talyllyn Railway was created by an act of Parliament in 1865 to haul split and trimmed slate down the mountain from a quarry that had been 4 Book 1.indb 43 2/16/10 8:48:35 AM l i t t l e t r a i n s t o f a r a w a y p l a c e s .44. established 18 years earlier at Bryn Eglwys (Welsh for “church on the hill”) in the valley of the Nant Gwernol. The line would terminate on the Cardigan BaycoastatTywyn,wheretheslatecouldbeinterchangedwiththestandardgaugeAberystwyth &WelshCoastRailway,whichovertheyearsbecamethe Cambrian Railways, then the Great Western, then—when I visited—British Rail’sCambrianCoastLine.AllthistimetheTalyllynRailwaywastheTalyllyn Railway, built in 2-foot 3-inch gauge—the same as the nearby Corris, Machynlleth & River Dovey, constructed in 1859 as a horse tramway to haul slate from a quarry on the opposite side of the mountain from Bryn Eglwys. Steam traction came to the Corris Railway 20 years later. The Talyllyn, on the other hand, would be steam-hauled from the beginning. To that end, locomotive No. 1, Talyllyn, was delivered in September1865 asa0-4-0 saddletankerandhelpedinthefinalstagesof construction of theline.ThenextyearNo. 2,another0-4-0T,arrivedontheproperty.Both were products of Fletcher, Jennings & Co. These two were the only locomotives owned by the TR before the preservation era, and both were there when I visited more than 120 years after their arrival. In fact, when I was invited to ride the footplate (we Americans would call it a “cab ride”) on the TR in August 1987, it turned out that the locomotive I drew was the progenitor himself, Talyllyn, and still spry. It had long been a 0-4-2T,atrailing truckhaving been added in 1867 (at age 2) to correct “excessive vertical oscillation” onthefootplate,caused bytoomuch overhang atthe rear. This I took to mean that the cab bucked up and down in a disconcerting way. As I surveyed this diminutive antique before trying to board, I wondered how I could possibly squeeze into this tiny cab with the driver and fireman and still give the latter room to wield a “scoop,” locomotive-cab argot for shovel. (And speaking of argot, as an American visitor, I found one of the charms of British trains to be the frequent skewing of railway terminology from stateside usage. An engineer, for instance, is a driver, who works on the footplate, not in the cab. A conductor is a guard, who works in a carriage, not in a coach, though a group of carriages does comprise “coaching stock.” Freight trains are “goods workings,” made up of wagons, not cars.) The quality of Lilliputian diminution was no doubt a part of the Talyllyn Railway’s charm. All five of the line’s operable steam locomotives, the newest of which dated from 1921 (though all had been extensively rebuilt), were littlejewels:gleaminggreenpainttrimmedinblackandred,andimpeccably polished brass. No. 1, measuring just 18 feet end to end, was actually the longest of the fleet. This American’s eye, used to full-sized railroading, was bemused by the driver’s seemingly hulking size filling the locomotive’s crampedgangwayandbythefactthatalinesideobserverhadtohunkerdown to study valve gear and driving wheels. Book 1.indb 44 2/16/10 8:48:36 AM w a l e s .45. At least as important as smallness in explaining the fascination of the Talyllyn, however, is its heritage as a no...