The Ffestiniog Railway is a heritage railway based on 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in narrow-gauge, located in Gwynedd, Wales. It is a major tourist attraction located mainly within the Snowdonia National Park.
A Fairlie locomotive is a type of articulated steam locomotive that has the driving wheels on bogies. The locomotive may be double-ended or single ended.
A tank locomotive or tank engine is a steam locomotive which carries its water in one or more on-board water tanks, instead of a more traditional tender. Most tank engines also have bunkers to hold fuel; in a tender-tank locomotive a tender holds some or all of the fuel, and may hold some water also.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-4-0 represents one of the simplest possible types, that with two axles and four coupled wheels, all of which are driven. The wheels on the earliest four-coupled locomotives were connected by a single gear wheel, but from 1825 the wheels were usually connected with coupling rods to form a single driven set.
In the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotive wheel arrangement, an 0-4-4-0 is a locomotive with no leading wheels, two sets of four driving wheels, and no trailing wheels. The arrangement is chosen to give the articulation of a locomotive with only the short rigid wheelbase of an 0-4-0, but with its weight spread across eight wheels, and with all the weight carried on the driving wheels; effectively a flexible 0-8-0. Articulated examples were constructed as Mallet, Meyer, BMAG and Double Fairlie locomotives and also as geared locomotives such as Shay, Heisler, and Climax types. A similar configuration was used on some Garratt locomotives, but it is referred to as 0-4-0+0-4-0. In the electric and diesel eras, the Bo-Bo is comparable and closest to the Meyer arrangement of two swivelling bogies.
Russell is a narrow gauge steam locomotive originally built in 1906 for the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways (NWNGR), but most famously associated with the original Welsh Highland Railway (WHR), and now based at the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway in Porthmadog.
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 Ffestiniog 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.
There were more than a thousand British narrow-gauge railways ranging from large, historically significant common carriers to small, short-lived industrial railways. Many notable events in British railway history happened on narrow-gauge railways including the first use of steam locomotives, the first public railway and the first preserved railway.
Porthmadog Harbour railway station in Porthmadog, Gwynedd, North Wales. It is the passenger terminus of two narrow gauge railways: the Ffestiniog Railway, which was opened in 1836 to carry dressed slate from the Quarries around Blaenau Ffestiniog to the sea port of Porthmadog, for export by sea; and the Welsh Highland Railway, incorporated in 1923, which ran to Dinas. After rebuilding in 1997-2011, the other terminus is at Caernarfon, in sight of the Castle.
Dduallt railway station is a passenger station on the narrow gauge Ffestiniog Railway in northwest Wales, which was built in 1836 to carry dressed slate from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog for export by sea.
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.
George England and Co. was an early English manufacturer of steam locomotives founded by the engineer George England of Newcastle upon Tyne (1811–1878). The company operated from the Hatcham Iron Works in New Cross, Surrey, and began building locomotives in 1848.
The Gorseddau Tramway was a 3 ft narrow gauge railway built in Wales in 1856 to link the slate quarries around Gorseddau with the wharves at Porthmadog. It was an early forerunner of the Gorseddau Junction and Portmadoc Railway and subsequently the Welsh Highland Railway.
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.
Oakeley quarry is a slate quarry in the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, north Wales. It was the largest underground slate mine in the world, and had 26 floors spanning a vertical height of nearly 1,500 feet (460 m).
Moel Tryfan was a narrow gauge steam locomotive built for use on the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways (NWNGRs) in 1874/5. The locomotive was an 0-6-4T single Fairlie locomotive built by the Vulcan Foundry near Manchester. It spent its entire working life on the NWNGRs and its successors the Welsh Highland Railway (WHR) and the Ffestiniog Railway (FfR).
The Festiniog Railway Little Wonder was a 0-4-4-0T steam locomotive built by George England for the Festiniog Railway in 1869.
Princess is an 0-4-0ST+T steam locomotive built by George England for the Ffestiniog Railway in 1863. It is one of the earliest narrow gauge steam locomotives and is one of the three oldest surviving narrow gauge locomotives still on its original railway.
Blaenau Festiniog Junction railway station was the Festiniog Railway (FR)'s third of eventually five passenger stations in Blaenau Ffestiniog, then in Merionethshire, now in Gwynedd, Wales.
North west Wales experienced a slate boom in the first half of the nineteenth century. Three sites stood out as experiencing the most explosive growth: Dinorwic near Llanberis, Penrhyn near Bethesda and Blaenau Ffestiniog.
