Welsh Highland Heritage Railway

The railway offers a 1-mile train ride to Pen-y-Mount Junction (where there is a physical rail connection to the current Welsh Highland Railway). On the return journey, the train stops at Gelert’s Farm Halt, the location of the workshops and museum, where visitors can also ride on the Miniature Railway before returning to the WHHR station at Porthmadog.

On my journey, the large, blue diesel locomotive called Emma pulled the train with green, dark red, and light blue carriages. The seating was wooden and painted green.  

The museum is full of wonderful railway paraphernalia with several fascinating exhibits. There’s an example of one of the low wagons that used to bring the finished slate down from the mountains. It looked extraordinarily heavy, and an accompanying video and photographs seemed to show that men used to ride on a ‘train’ of about a dozen of these wagons, each man sitting on one wagon, with the brakes applied manually. It looked dangerous because if the brakes failed, there’d be a hell of a mess somewhere. 

There are railway books, a steam locomotive, wagons, and plenty of crayons and paper so kids can enjoy drawing the exhibits. If you have books with you that you would like to donate to the railway, then there are two places where you can leave them in the museum, and judging by the books there, they don’t have to be about railways

My new book is available here.

The book covers not only the Great Little Trains of Wales but also other methods of transport in the UK.

I was eight years old when my interest in steam trains began. My parents and I lived close to someone who worked at Doncaster train station. The Flying Scotsman was the most famous train of the time, and for some reason it was at Doncaster for a few days. I was asked whether I’d like to see the train and go on the footplate. Of course I did. What I remember most was the enormous size of the train and that the driver’s cab seemed as big as my bedroom. Everything about the train, the colours, the gleaming metal, the gorgeous carriages, the mountain of coal, made a lasting impression – I wanted to go to places, and I wanted to go on a train like this one.

My father wanted to travel, and the plan was for my parents to see the world when he retired. Cancer cut short his life and their plan died with him. Once I had the finances, I felt duty bound to travel to the places he wanted to go, and if possible, go by steam train. This book is what I found.