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Welshpool & Llanfair The history of Welshpool & Llanfair light railway 1903-2003
Welshpool & Llanfair The history of the Welshpool and Llanfair light railway and its preservation 1903 - 2003 By Ralph I. Cartwright
Hardcover with dustjacket
208 pages
Copyright 2002
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1- Early Schemes & Rival Plans
Chapter 2 - Building the Line
MAP
Chapter 3 - The Cambrian Era
Chapter 4 - New Owners
Chapter 5 - Rescue and Revival
Chapter 6 - Getting to Welshpool
Chapter 7 - Modern Times
Chapter 8 - Infrastructure and Working Procedures
THE WELSHPOOL & LLANFAIR IN COLOUR
Chapter 9 - Motive Power
Chapter 10 - The Passenger Stock
Chapter 11 - The Freight Stock
TRACK LAYOUTS -1903 - 2001
Appendix 1- Stopping Places, Crossings and Distances
Appendix 2 - Dimensions of Locomotives
Appendix 3 - Freight Stock Renumbering and Rebuilding
Appendix 4 - Traffic Figures
Appendix 5 - Timetables (Cambrian, GWR and W&LLRP Co.)
Appendix 6 - Instructions (GWR) - Loading and Conveyance of Round Timber
Appendix 7 - Instructions (GWR) - Absolute Occupation of Line
Appendix 8 - Notice - Special General Meeting, 1922
Index
Introduction
The Llanfair Railway (as local people call it) first aroused my interest when I heard that a group of ordinary people was planning to reopen a line recently closed by the mighty British Railways. Then, this was generally regarded as audacious if not preposterous. Be that as it may, I soon discovered that narrow gauge trains with chubby storybook engines were (occasionally) still weaving through the streets and backyards in the border market town of Welshpool. The next time my attention was caught was the news that the line's river bridge had collapsed and all kinds of help was needed. Responding, I found friendly faces and unflagging optimism, but a dire shortage of funds and meagre resources of any kind. Fortune smiled, however, the bridge got mended and slowly over the years the Railway grew.
Here was, for me, a rather special little Railway. This was the first narrow gauge line built under the auspices of the 1896 Light Railways Act - surely illustrating how a rural rail link could be built simply as was implicit in the Act. Once it served a community rather than a special traffic. Use of the 2ft 6ins gauge, tangling with the town and piercing the hill country with grinding curves and capricious gradients, truly tapped the Act's spirit of purpose. At the dawn of the 20th century, it provided transport for local people and freight in a thinly populated rural area.
The birth pangs of the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway were the result of financial stringency. In Cambrian times it struggled to keep its head above water and the GWR quickly discovered that it was more a liability than an asset. Procrastination saved the line. So it survived to play a useful role during World War II and but for this it might not have remained to be taken into state ownership.
The preservation enterprise, too, started life poor and ill-prepared as the first attempt at something akin to privatisation'. But for these pioneering enthusiasts, the allure of this wayward line was irresistible with tracks embedded in grass, weaving between hillsides tilted at unlikely angles ... and two stalwart little tank engines.
After no less than forty years under the present administration, the W&L has undergone a transformation.
Only a few traces of the town section survive: the narrow passage through the back yards together with the cottages themselves has given way to a wide stretch of new road while the site of the old passenger terminus and standard gauge sidings has become a roundabout leading on to the new Welshpool bypass. The preserved line, long since truncated, retains much of the rustic simplicity it exhibited in 1903, but the wide approaches, spacious car parking areas and raised platforms at both termini underline the changed role of the Railway.
Those eras of ramshackle charm and make-do-and-mend under BR and after reopening have given way to a much more sophisticated approach. Orderly, well tended infrastructure and regular trains, smartly turned out and with an international flavour reflect the efforts of a modern generation of supporters, many affluent way beyond the norm of early well-wishers, and access to public funds such as never thought possible. Today, supporters come to enjoy a hobby: the struggle to rescue the line from oblivion is won.
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