Rebuilding the Welsh Highland Railway^* Available to Purchase

North Wales has been famous as the centre of narrow gauge railways, and the most famous of those lines was the Ffestiniog Railway (FR). The FR was involved in another, lesser known, line, originally called the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways, which was later extended to join the Ffestiniog line at Porthmadog, when it was renamed the Welsh Highland Railway (WHR). The WHR, opened in 1923, was not a success, and closed after only thirteen years. Fifty years later the FR set out to rebuild the line, this time with adequate capital, and extend it to Caernarfon, its natural destination. The paper looks at the history of the line, at the engineering challenges that arise from restoring a railway that was originally built to a very low budget, and that lay derelict for over sixty years, and how those challenges are being overcome.