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Festiniog Railway Gravity Trains by Peter Johnson SoftCover
Festiniog Railway Gravity Trains by Peter Johnson
Softcover 16 pages
Copyright 1986
Gravity working gave the Festiniog renown even as a horse tramway. It was not a unique method, for many mineral lines worked by gravity - notably the Lee Moor Tramway on Dartmoor - but its refinement became so, for only on the FR was it developed for high-speed mineral (and at one time passenger) trains running to a strictly-maintained timetable. The Festiniog now has half a mile of adverse gradient so that commercial gravity trains will ever remain a memory.
In the first days of iron fish-belly rail and horses, operation was leisurely and justifiably unambitious. Trains of seven or eight wooden wagons plus a dandy crossed each other at Cae Ednyfed (Minffordd), Rhiw Goch, Hafod-y-Llyn and the south end of Moelwyn Tunnel, both up and down trains stopping for ten minutes at each place to exchange horses. Up trains travelled at about 2 mph and Down trains at 10 mph; gates at the loops discouraged overshooting.
Fortunately one of the horse timetables, that for 1856, has survived and is shown here. As shown (and as written down by Charles Spooner) it appears to be full of one-ended workings, but Spooner's remarks on traffic made at the same time make it clear that there were no more than six trains a day each way. Up Train No 6 could stop overnight at Hafod-y-Llyn or Tunnel, according to the convenience of the contractor's drivers, and Up Train No 7 is the same as Up Train No 1, night-stopping optionally at Cae Ednyfed, Rhiw Goch or Hafod-y-Llyn. It is possible that Down Train No 1 ran non-stop through Tunnel station to shunt all the horses 'round' one section so that they reached a smithy regularly. The large stables at Boston Lodge and Rhiwbryfdir probably had a smith and Cae Ednyfed certainly did, but Hafod-y-Llyn and Rhiw Goch were way-stables and a small one in a surviving revetment opposite the Tafarntrip plantation was used by a driver who lived there. No trace of the Tunnel stable survives, though there is a blocked-off gateway just by the Tunnel Mess.
When traffic became too great for the single-horse trains to handle, up to four were worked through the sections together, separately in the up direction and coupled (with all the dandies at the rear) in the down. At Boston Lodge the dandies were detached and wagons, after weighing, worked across to Portmadoc as required. The interesting thing is that this arrangement gave the Festiniog a comfortable theoretical capacity of 70,000 tons a year, yet steam locomotives had been a talking point since 1850 when the tonnage carried (Jan-Dec) was only 43,000. Even in 1856 the level had only gone up to 54,000. In all probability the FR was being asked, like modern commuter lines, to carry uneconomically large peaks; and the Spooners, while making a lot of noise about the present, were looking to the future - 70,000 was in fact achieved in 1864.
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