A Journey to Remember

[SillyBilly]

Last night a phone call was received from a good friend of ours offering my father or I a place on the first ever train to travel between Caernarfon & Porthmadog on the Welsh Highland Railway, and who would I be to refuse such an offer? As you can imagine I awoke quite easily this morning so that we could get to Caernarfon in time for the journey Porthmadog, quite silly when you consider we live about 3 miles from Porthmadog! Having travelled to Hafod-Y-Llyn last year it wasn't until there that new territory unfolded and although the new territory is flat it gives panoramic views of all the mountains, anyway as you can imagine the trip was spectacular, we arrived at Pen-Y-Mount where a WHHR train met us and ran in tandem to Gelert’s Farm where the railways divide, there was a pleasant exchange of whistles to mark another milestone in railway preservation, even the WHHR chaps looked happy to see it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33954238@N02
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UDWDq3ZHA
My photos and video, sorry if there is too much of 87 climbing away from Beddgelert, but I couldn't resist including it.

And a huge Thank You to my friends.

[laalratty]

What a momentous day, it's my turn to be envious of you William... I thought it was a nice touch that the WHHR ran Gelert parralel at Porthmadog, I just hope it's the prelude to better relations

[MDLR]

You jammy sod! For us mere mortals, do you know how long a return journey will take, and how much will the tickets be?

[SillyBilly]

I would expect a round trip to take between 5-6 hours but as you can tell that is a very rough guesstimateand is if you were to just do it as a rail journey there and back, but obviously there is much to explore in Porthmadog or Beddgelert. There was an online copy of the provisional 2009 timetable, but as the railway isn't finished it became redundant and I think now has been removed, the timetable for today was based on 5 or so miles of 10mph and then it ran badly late. I'd guess it may end up at £40-£45 per head C'fon-Port return but that is 50miles of narrow gauge railway you are getting, steam if you choose so from the timetable, you've go to think of it as the UK's narrow gauge equivalent of a mainline steam tour to see the justification of the cost. I suspect lots of traffic will be people from Port and C'fon travelling to Beddgelert, and I expect this is how a lot of the tourist marketing will be done like.

But this is just how it appears to me.

[ACLR]

thanks for the ride SB that was brilliant

[LMS-Jools]

Fab

[MoelygestLR]

what scale was that model of one of the WHR coaches?
looked very nice none the less.

oh and of course i am very envious, wish i could have been there, would have been if i hadn't have had other business to attend to

[SillyBilly]

The coach is more or less 16mm scale and is one of the scratchbuilt batch for the Train Appeal gold subscribers, it runs on Accucraft L&B bogies and is most deffinatley not a GRS kit.

http://oliverbennettphotoofsteamtrain.f ... 98409.html
Some nice lineside photos here.