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Alice is an 0-4-0 ST steam locomotive. It was built in 1902 by the Hunslet Engine Company (works number 780) for the Dinorwic quarry at Llanberis, in North Wales. It was originally called No. 4; there was an earlier locomotive called Alice which was built in 1889 (works number 492) and later renamed King of the Scarlets.
There were eleven engines of Dinorwic 'Alice' class supplied between 1886 and 1932, the first of which was Velinheli (Works No. 409 of 1886), but the class was named after the first Alice (Works No.492 of 1889) to avoid confusion with the separate Port Dinorwic organisation. [1] Over 46 years a number of changes were made to the design, some so substantial as to warrant an unofficial sub-class known as the Port Class.
Alice, in common with most of the class, did not have a dome but a steam chamber produced by the firebox outer shell being raised some six inches above the boiler barrel. It was not usual to fit cabs to these engines since they had to work under incline bridges and through tunnels in the quarries.
Alice spent all of its life working on various galleries at the Dinorwic slate quarry. The locomotive was in consequence rarely photographed. By the early 1960s the locomotive was out of use and was partially dismantled to provide spares for her sister locomotives at Dinorwic. She was parked in a shed at the Australia gallery.
When the quarry at Dinorwic closed in 1969, Alice’s remains were still at the Australia gallery. The wheels and underparts had been salvaged and these were sold as spares for her sister locomotive Holy War.
Holy War was the last steam locomotive to work in a slate quarry, ending her working life in November 1967. The locomotive was purchased, along with the spares from Alice, by J. Marshfield Hutchings and went to Quainton Road, Buckinghamshire. In 1975 Holy War and the spares from Alice were purchased by the Rev. Alan Cliff, Vice-President of the Bala Lake Railway Society and brought to Llanuwchllyn, the headquarters of the Bala Lake Railway, and were leased to the railway.
In the meantime, Alice’s frames and tank were recovered and taken to the West Lancashire Light Railway at Hesketh Bank, near Preston. In 1977 these remains were acquired jointly by Alan Cliff and George Barnes, who was then the General Manager and Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Bala Lake Railway. Their acquisition meant that what remained of Alice was together again.
The Bala Lake Railway was loaned the parts of Alice and announced that it intended to rebuild the locomotive as a 0-4-2 tender locomotive. However, many other priorities made that intention impossible, although some work was done on the frames.
In 1987, Chris Scott, then a Bala Lake Railway volunteer, bought the remains from Alan Cliff. The railway company had decided that it could not pursue the restoration, although it listed Alice as in their stock from 1977. Alan Cliff, who had been taken ill at the beginning of 1987 and forced to take early retirement, was in no position to spearhead a campaign to restore Alice, so when Scott offered to purchase the locomotive and seek to restore her, Alan and the Bala Lake Railway were delighted. What remained of Alice was later moved to Scott's garage.
Chris Scott was at that time a volunteer fireman on the Ffestiniog Railway, and the first outing for Alice after her long restoration was in April 1994 on that railway, initially in the yard at Boston Lodge and later along the full length of the main line up to Blaenau Ffestiniog.
On 19 June 1994, Alice arrived at the Leighton Buzzard Light Railway. Mrs Alice Hyde, whose son Bill was a driver on the Bala Lake Railway, had set up a bookstall to raise money for the locomotive’s restoration, and Scott promised that when the engine ran again it should be re-dedicated to and by its namesake and benefactor. During the railway’s Steam Gala event on 10 September 1994, Mrs Hyde, who had travelled down from Bala in North Wales, re-dedicated the name of the locomotive Alice. On the following day Alice worked her first passenger train, double-headed with Barclay steam locomotive Doll. Alice was later fitted with braking equipment and operated passenger trains on its own.
Alice visited the Welsh Highland Railway on 19–20 September 1998 for the first Enthusiasts' Weekend. The loco was based at Leighton Buzzard for its first ten years of operation in preservation, following which it moved to Rheilffordd Llyn Tegid Bala Lake Railway, in 2003 where it was painted black.
In 2010, the locomotive was purchased by Julian Birley and restored to Dinorwic red.
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The West Lancashire Light Railway (WLLR) is a 2 ft narrow gauge railway that operates at Hesketh Bank, situated between Preston and Southport in North West England. The distance between the stations on the railway is 430 yards (393 m), though track extends eastwards beyond Delph station on ledge above the old clay pit which is too narrow to contain a run round loop. An extension of up to 435 metres (1,427 ft), running along the north bank of the fishing lake has been proposed. The railway has seven steam locomotives, three of which are in operating condition; two are currently being rebuilt and another is on static display. There are also two electric locomotives and many IC locomotives.
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The Llanberis Lake Railway is a 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in narrow gauge heritage railway that runs for 2.5 miles (4 km) along the northern shore of Llyn Padarn in north Wales in the Snowdonia National Park. The starting point is the village of Llanberis at the eastern end of the lake, with the western terminus at Pen Llyn in the Padarn Country Park. The return journey takes around 60 minutes.
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Dinorwic quarry is a large former slate quarry, now home to the Welsh National Slate Museum, located between the villages of Llanberis and Dinorwig in Wales. At its height at the start of the 20th century, it was the second largest slate quarry in Wales, after the neighbouring Penrhyn quarry near Bethesda. Dinorwic covered 700 acres (283 ha) consisting of two main quarry sections with 20 galleries in each. Extensive internal tramway systems connected the quarries using inclines to transport slate between galleries. Since its closure in 1969, the quarry has become the site of the National Slate Museum, a regular film location, and an extreme rock climbing destination.
The Penrhyn Main Line class is a class of three narrow gauge steam locomotives built for the Penrhyn Quarry Railway (PQR). These locomotives were built by the Hunslet Engine Company between 1882 and 1893 and supplied specifically to work the railway that connected the Penrhyn Quarry near Bethesda in north Wales to Port Penrhyn on the Menai Strait.
The Penrhyn Port Class is a class of three narrow gauge steam locomotives built for the Penrhyn Quarry Railway (PQR). These locomotives were built by the Hunslet Engine Company between 1883 and 1885 and supplied specifically to work at Port Penrhyn near Bangor, north Wales. They were a variant of the standard Dinorwic Alice Class design.
0-4-0VBTChaloner is an example of de Winton's distinctive vertical-boilered design, as used for many years in the North Wales slate quarries. It was built in 1877 at the Union Works in Caernarfon.
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The Dinorwic Alice Class is a class of eleven narrow-gauge 0-4-0ST steam locomotives built specifically for the Dinorwic quarry. These locomotives were built by the Hunslet Engine Company between 1886 and 1904, and were designed and supplied specifically to work the many galleries of the quarry at Llanberis, North Wales.
Holy War is a preserved narrow gauge steam locomotive built in 1902, based at the Bala Lake Railway in North Wales. It was the last steam locomotive to operate in a Welsh slate quarry.
Maid Marian is a preserved narrow-gauge steam locomotive built in 1903, currently based at the Bala Lake Railway in North Wales.
Cliff Thomas is a British railway author and journalist, particularly known for his works on narrow-gauge railways.
Diana is a narrow gauge 0-4-0T steam locomotive. It was built by Kerr, Stuart and Company in 1909, and was delivered to the Kerry Tramway in Mid Wales, in 1917. After varied service in the Welsh slate industry, Diana was purchased by railway enthusiast Graham Mullis in 1964. After many years at a variety of location, Diana was purchased by a Talyllyn Railway volunteer in 2014, and restored to working order in 2015.
Gilfach Ddu are a series of well preserved Grade I listed industrial buildings built to serve the Dinorwic slate quarry near Llanberis in Caernarfonshire, North Wales. The workshops are a complex of repair and maintenance buildings, that were built in 1870 to build and maintain the machinery used in the quarry. The complex includes saw sheds, patternmaking shops, a foundry with copula, blacksmiths shops, fitting shops, stores, engine sheds, a canteen, the chief engineers house, a hand operated crane and two waterwheels which provided the site with its power. Since 1972 the buildings have housed the National Slate Museum.
Gloddfa Ganol was a museum dedicated to the Welsh slate industry and narrow-gauge railways, situated in the Oakeley slate quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog. It opened in 1974 and closed in 1998 following an auction of its exhibits.