The Abandoned Ffestiniog Railway & Deviations

We're at the world famous narrow gauge railway - the Ffestiniog Railway today. One of the jewels in Wales great little train attractions.

The railway opened in 1830s. It's role was to transport slate from the many quarries up the line to Bleanau Ffestiniog down to the sea at Porthmadog, where it would be shipped worldwide. The line travels through some spectatular landscapes. In the 1940s the line fell into disrepair and closed down. It was saved by a group of volunteers and piece by piece restored all the way to the destination of Bleanau.

In this video we're looking at one section of the railway that was lost for different reasons. In the 1950s, plans for a hyro-electric power station near the town of Tanygrisiau caused the course of the line to be lost under water. Despite protests and the railway already having plans to reopen, the flooding went ahead. This has left the railway with some interesting disused sections of the original railway. As in the 1960s and 1970s, volunteers would work away building a new line - known as the Deviation - or the Llyn Ystradau Deviation. These were called the Deviationists. At Dduallt station, the line entered a new spiral formation that raised the railway 36 feet to the new alignment around the flooded valley.

The original route when the line opened was horse drawn, with gravity doing the work on the gentle gradient going down, and horses pulling the empty wagons back up. However after only a handful of years, this route was found to be not fit for purpose due to incline plains needed to navigate the bottom of the Moelwyn Mountains. In 1842, a new tunnel was built - what is now known as the old Moelwyn tunnel. This was abandoned and plugged when the line was flooded.

The new deviation saw a new tunnel built as the line snaked it's way through cuttings to Tanygrisiau.

We'll take a look at what is left of the old routes and how these differ from the new route.

Cwmorthin Quarry Tramway video -    • Abandoned Slate Quarry Tramway off th...  

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#festiniog
#portmadog