The dandy waggon is a type of railway carriage used to carry horses on gravity trains. [1] They are particularly associated with the narrow gauge Festiniog Railway (FR) in Wales where they were used between 1836 and 1863.
The dandy waggon is a type of railway carriage used to carry horses on gravity trains. [1] They are particularly associated with the narrow gauge Festiniog Railway (FR) in Wales where they were used between 1836 and 1863.
The challenge on the FR was to move slate from an elevated location to a harbour for shipping, in this case from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog, Wales. [2] In 2006 this is a 28-minute drive over 11.9 miles (19.1 kilometers), [3] but in 1832 it was a remote mountain area. The railway was laid on an average grade of about 1 in 80. Trains running downhill were powered by gravity, with 3 stops. The total journey time was about an hour and a half. Trains were moved uphill by horses until 1863, the journey taking almost 6 hours. [4] It was therefore necessary to find a way to bring the horses back down again.
George Stephenson is credited for having proposed a solution: build special cars for the horses to ride in on the way down for use on the Stockton & Darlington Railway which was opened in 1825. [5] By 1827 the Stockton and Darlington Railway was in difficulties with its unreliable steam locomotives, and was on the point of giving them up. They returned to using horse-drawn vehicles operated by independent contractors. Each horse was expected to haul some twelve-and-a-half tons of coal, making three round trips in six days. The work was exhausting for them and they soon became lame.
George Stephenson introduced the dandy wagon in 1828, which was simply a four-wheeled cart supplied with hay, attached to the rear of a four-chaldron train in which the horse could rest on the downhill sections. It was said that if the dandy wagon was missing the horse would try to jump onto the rearmost chaldron. [6]
On the FR this gave the horses a chance to eat and rest on the way down, and after the slate cars were unloaded refreshed horses were available to haul the empty cars back to the top. On other railways the downhill horse haulage was generally shorter, occurring only along some areas of the track, but still allowed the horses a rest before going back to work.
According to the Traveller's Guide (Blue Cover) [7] Wagon number 50, a 4- wheel Iron Horse Dandy, built at Boston Lodge c.1861 was still in existence and stored at the Ffestiniog Railway museum as of April 1992.
Other names for horse-carrying cars are "dandy cart" and "dandy truck": [8] they all refer to a vehicle on a horse-worked railway that a horse pulls to the top of the hill and rides down the hill in. The term "dandy cart" is also used to refer to horse-drawn passenger trains on occasion. [9]
Almost all early railways used horses as the motive power for trains before the invention of the steam locomotive.
The Ballochney Railway used a "dandy-cart" on the two "Ballochney Inclines" each having a grade of around 1 in 23 for distances of about 1000 yards. A descending train was connected by rope and pulley to an ascending train; the weight of the downhill train pulled the up hill train up the hill. [10]
The geography of the Ffestiniog Railway may have had some impact on allowing this imaginative solution to be applied to a large percentage of its total haulage; a relatively long section of track, running exclusively between two points, where a relatively constant and continuous downhill grade could be maintained.
In 1828 Alfred Pocock, who was developing a non-rail horseless carriage propelled by a kite(s), proposed on a particular trip that the kite carriage should tow a dandy-cart to carry a pony in the event of the wind being unfavorable. [11]
In the UK, in the early days of rail and tramways, either spelling was acceptable. In the UK, today, in national rail operations, the spelling is "wagon". Within the Festiniog (note 1 F), during the 19th century the spelling was interchangeable. For commonality, now, a single g is often used. However, it is still common to use "waggon" to refer to goods stock. [12]
The term Dandy Wagon (regionally correct spelling) referred to a horse-drawn private buggy used in America during the 1800s. [13]
The Ffestiniog Railway is a 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in narrow-gauge heritage railway, located in Gwynedd, Wales. It is a major tourist attraction located mainly within the Snowdonia National Park.
The Welsh Highland Railway (WHR) or Rheilffordd Eryri is a 25-mile (40.2 km) long, restored 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in narrow gauge heritage railway in the Welsh county of Gwynedd, operating from Caernarfon to Porthmadog, and passing through a number of popular tourist destinations including Beddgelert and the Aberglaslyn Pass. At Porthmadog it connects with the Ffestiniog Railway and to the short Welsh Highland Heritage Railway. In Porthmadog it uses the United Kingdom's only mixed gauge flat rail crossing.
A gravity railroad or gravity railway is a railroad on a slope that allows cars carrying minerals or passengers to coast down the slope by the force of gravity alone. The speed of the cars is controlled by a braking mechanism on one or more cars on the train. The cars are then hauled back up the slope using animal power, a locomotive or a stationary engine and a cable, a chain or one or more wide, flat iron bands. A much later example in California used 4 ft 8+1⁄2 instandard gauge steam engines to pull gravity cars back to the summit of Mt. Tamalpais.
A cable railway is a railway that uses a cable, rope or chain to haul trains. It is a specific type of cable transportation.
Cycloped was an early horse-powered locomotive, built by Thomas Shaw Brandreth of Liverpool, which competed unsuccessfully in the Rainhill trials of October 1829.
Blaenau Ffestiniog railway station serves the slate mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales, and is the passenger terminus of the Conwy Valley Line from Llandudno Junction. Transport for Wales Rail operate through services to Llandudno Junction and Llandudno. The station is a joint station with the narrow gauge Ffestiniog Railway, which operates primarily tourist passenger services to Porthmadog throughout most of the year. A feature of the standard gauge service is the availability on trains and buses of the popular "Gwynedd Red Rover" day ticket.
The Festiniog & Blaenau Railway (F&BR) was a narrow gauge railway built in 1868 to connect the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog in Wales with the slate quarries around Tanymanod and the village of Llan Ffestiniog, 3+1⁄2 miles (5.6 km) to the south. At Blaenau Ffestiniog it made a direct connection with the Festiniog Railway (FR) with which it was closely associated during its fifteen-year life. The railway was purchased by the Bala and Festiniog Railway in 1883 and converted to 4 ft 8+1⁄2 instandard gauge to extend the Bala Ffestiniog line, a branch of the GWR's line from Ruabon to Barmouth.
Minffordd railway station is a pair of adjacent stations on separate lines in Gwynedd, Wales. The mainline station opened as Minfford Junction on 1 August 1872 at the point where the then recently built Aberystwith and Welsh Coast Railway line from Dovey Junction to Pwllheli passes under the earlier narrow gauge Festiniog Railway. The latter was built in 1836 to carry dressed slate from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog for export by sea, and had carried passengers from 1865 onwards. The station was renamed Minffordd in 1890.
A horse-drawn vehicle is a mechanized piece of equipment pulled by one horse or by a team of horses. These vehicles typically had two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers and/or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have mostly been replaced by automobiles and other forms of self-propelled transport.
The Spooners of Porthmadog refers to the Spooner family of Porthmadog, North Wales who made important contributions to the development of narrow gauge railways both locally and throughout the world. James Spooner, together with his sons James Swinton and Charles Easton and other members of their family, constructed and managed the Ffestiniog Railway for over fifty years. In North Wales they were involved in the promotion of numerous railway schemes including many quarry lines, the Talyllyn Railway, the Festiniog and Blaenau Railway, the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways and the Carnarvonshire Railway. Through publications and overseas family commissions they influenced narrow gauge railway construction in Russia, America and throughout the British Empire.
The Bala and Festiniog Railway was a 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in, standard gauge, railway backed by the Great Western Railway (GWR) in north-west Wales. It connected Bala with Blaenau Ffestiniog.
The Rhiwbach Tramway was a Welsh industrial, 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in narrow gauge railway connecting the remote slate quarries east of Blaenau Ffestiniog with the Ffestiniog Railway. It was in use by 1862, and remained so until progressively closed between 1956 and 1976. The route included three inclines, one of which became the last operational gravity incline in the North Wales slate industry. The tramway was worked by horses and gravity for much of its existence, but a diesel locomotive was used to haul wagons on the top section between 1953 and its closure in 1961.
Tan-y-Manod railway station was a railway station approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Blaenau Ffestiniog, in Gwynedd, North Wales.
The Ballochney Railway was an early railway built near Airdrie, Lanarkshire, now in Monklands, Scotland. It was intended primarily to carry minerals from coal and ironstone pits, and stone quarries, in the area immediately north and east of Airdrie, to market, predominantly over the adjoining Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway. Passengers were carried later.
A minecart or mine cart is a type of rolling stock found on a mine railway, used for moving ore and materials procured in the process of traditional mining. Minecarts are seldom used in modern operations, having largely been superseded in underground operations by more efficient belt conveyor systems that allow machines such as longwall shearers and continuous miners to operate at their full capacity, and above ground by large dumpers.
A tub or quarry tub is a type of railway or tramway wagon used in quarries and other industrial locations for the transport of minerals from a quarry or mine face to processing plants or between various parts of an industrial site. This type of wagon may be small enough for one person to push, or designed for haulage by a horse, or for connection in a train hauled by a locomotive. The tubs are designed for ease of emptying, usually by a side-tipping action. This type of rail vehicle is now mainly obsolete, its function having been mostly replaced by conveyor belts.
Open wagons form a large group of railway goods wagons designed primarily for the transportation of bulk goods that are not moisture-retentive and can usually be tipped, dumped or shovelled. The International Union of Railways (UIC) distinguishes between ordinary wagons and special wagons (F/6). Open wagons often form a significant part of a railway company's goods wagon fleet; for example, forming just under 40% of the Deutsche Bahn's total goods wagon stock in Germany.
A mine railway, sometimes pit railway, is a railway constructed to carry materials and workers in and out of a mine. Materials transported typically include ore, coal and overburden. It is little remembered, but the mix of heavy and bulky materials which had to be hauled into and out of mines gave rise to the first several generations of railways, at first made of wooden rails, but eventually adding protective iron, steam locomotion by fixed engines and the earliest commercial steam locomotives, all in and around the works around mines.
Wrysgan quarry was a slate quarry near the village of Tanygrisiau, Blaenau Festiniog, North Wales. It was worked intermittently from the 1830s, and was worked continuously from c.1850 until 1946. Wrysgan was an underground slate quarry, which was located on a small inaccessible site, some 1,390 feet (420 m) above sea level, to the west of Cwmorthin.
On 10 September 1883 the Bala and Festiniog Railway (B&FR) and the Festiniog Railway (FR) opened what would be known as an interchange station in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Merionethshire, Wales. Merionethshire is now part of the county of Gwynedd.
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dandy waggon . |
A History of the Kägy Relationship in America.