 Horse-drawn slate wagon used on the Tramway, now preserved at the Welsh Slate Museum, Llanberis | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Penygroes |
| Locale | Wales |
| Dates of operation | 1828–1865 |
| Successor | Carnarvonshire Railway |
| Technical | |
| Track gauge | 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) and 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) |
Nantlle Railway | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Nantlle Railway (or Nantlle Tramway) was a Welsh narrow gauge railway. It was built to carry slate from several slate quarries across the Nantlle Valley to the harbour at Caernarfon for export by sea. The line provided a passenger service between Caernarfon and Talysarn from 1856 to 1865. It was the first public railway to be operated in North Wales.[1]
A tramway linking the Nantlle slate quarries to Caernarfon was proposed in the 1810s. The Nantlle Railway was authorised by an Act of Parliament in May 1825, and the company began construction of the railway. The line was designed and constructed by George Stephenson and his brother, Robert.[2] The line opened in 1828 and was operated using horses.
During the 1860s and 1870s, a portion of the line was replaced by the standard gauge branch of the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) which acquired the line in the late 1860s. The Nantlle Railway was closed in 1963 by British Railways (BR), when it was the last line to be operated by BR using horse traction. Much of the route has been overlaid with roads or obliterated by other developments, but several railway structures remain. Two miles of the northern section of the original Nantlle Railway trackbed, between Dinas and the Coed Helen Lane tunnel, are part of the reopened Welsh Highland Railway, although much is off line as was the Carnarvonshire Railway route on which the restored WHR was constructed.