Now that we are back in Canada full-time and know where we will be living long-term, I’ve initiated the planning process for the 7/8″ scale Marchlyn Quarry Railway. To start, I’ve pulled together a number of photos of the prototype Penrhyn Quarry Railway for reference and flavour.
Coed-y-Parc
This was the south end of the Penrhyn Quarry Railway. Here the PQR connected with the slate quarry. Coed-y-Parc was also the location of the main slate dressing mills, the sheds for the steam engines as well as a small yard for marshalling the trains to Port Penrhyn. Coed-y-Parc featured a beautiful road bridge splitting the Coed-y-Parc yards in two. It also featured an impressive slate wall on the south side of its property that ran the length of the yard.
Coed-y-Parc Bridge and Wall, unknown date
Felin Fawr 1962
Hendurnpike Crossing
Hendurnpike featured a picturesque road crossing. The original crossing guard’s shed was still standing in 2013!
Hendurnpike Crossing 1962
Hendurnpike Crossing, 23rd February 2013
Tregarth
Tregrath was the location of the main passing loop about halfway between Coed-y-Parc and Port Penrhyn.
Tregarth Passing Loop, 1963
Port Penrhyn
Port Penrhyn was the north end of the PQR and where the finished slate was transferred to boats and ships for export. Port Penrhyn was also served by the standard gauge British Railway, making for some interesting trackwork.
This is another interesting video of the Trillium Railway operations circa 2012. The back story is that CP was on strike at the time, preventing Trillium from using its normal interchange at Feeder. Instead interchange was done with the CN at Merritton. The video shows that all three Trillium locomotives were called into action.
Trillium Railway Detour Interchange, Merritton, May 26, 2012
The video does show the differences in traffic between the north and south parts of the railway. The south part is dominated by tank cars and covered hoppers, while north of Merritton, boxcars and gondolas are more prevalent.
"Elidir" on the Llanberis Lake Railway - June 24, 2014
Robin and I have just returned from two weeks in Wales where we hiked, walked around old castles and manor houses and rode four of the Great Little Trains of Wales. The four railways we rode were:
On the Llanberis Lake Railway, we rode behind “Elidir“. We used the Welsh Highland Railway to complete a hike we did from Rhyd Ddu to Beddgelert. We photographed both Garrett engines used on the WHR, numbers 138 and 143, earlier in the day when they crossed near Rhyd Ddu but rode behind no 138 back to Rhyd Ddu. On the Ffestiniog, we rode the “David Lloyd George” down from Blaneau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog and the “Earl of Merioneth” back up. Finally, on the Talyllyn, we rode behind the “Tom Rolt“.
Each trip had its own highlights, but having the opportunity to see these classic steam engines running through the Wales countryside was reward enough.
I have additional pictures from the Llanberis Lake, Welsh Highland and Talyllyn Railways on Flickr.
The Penrhyn Quarry Railway was possibly the first two foot gauge railway in the world, the quarry it served the largest slate quarry in the world, the slab mill and inclines the oldest in Wales. All this makes this iconic railway of national, if not global, importance. After 167 years of service, the Penrhyn Quarry Railway was closed in June 1962, most of the locomotives finding new homes throughout the world.
To give you a feel about the PQR near the last days of its operations, the following Youtube video shows some vintage footage from the 1950’s:
Sixty years later, here are some of the preserved engines and rolling stock of the PQR running on the Llanberis Lake Railway.
After reviewing my last few posts here at Trains @ Station Studios, I realized that while I talked a lot about engines and rolling stock, I have not done a good job of explaining the back story of the Marchlyn Quarry Railway. So let’s fix that now.
I first ran across the narrow gauge slate railways of Wales back in 1988. I lived in London, England for three years in the late 1980’s and my cousins from Canada visited for a couple of weeks. While we spent a lot of time seeing the sights in London, we rented a car and drove to Wales for a week. We started in the south of Wales in the Brecon Beacons area and made our way north. When I learned that there was a narrow gauge railway running down from the hills at Blaenau Ffestiniog to the seaside at Porthmadog, I convinced the others that we had to go for a ride on it. It was a memorable experience.
After I returned to Canada, my modelling interests moved onto other things like the PM&TCo. But as I started to get more and more interested in garden and live steam railways when we lived in Texas, it was not long before I was coming across the Great Little Trains of Wales and the myriad of opportunities to use them as a theme for my next garden railway. My purchase of a 7/8″ scale live steam engine and three slate cars back in 2011 sealed the deal.
I thought about going pretty much fully freelance in the design but have always liked basing my model railroads closely on real prototypes. So I started to investigate the various slate railways that ran into the 1950’s. The most well-known four were:
I made the following Google Map to show where each of these railways where and the slate quarries each of them served (you can expand the map to full screen and zoom in to see the details more closely):
There is much to recommend to use any of the four as a basis for a garden railway, but in the end I think the Penrhyn Quarry Railway had the most interesting combination of operations, engines, rolling stock and buildings. To give myself some room to take inspiration from the other three railways, I chose not to use the Penrhyn Quarry name. Instead during my research I found that there was a short-lived slate quarrying operation lying just to the south of the main Penrhyn quarry. It was named the Marchlyn Quarry and so I chose to use it as the name of my 7/8″ scale railway.
So there you go: the back story to the Marchlyn Quarry Railway. There are several good online resources on the Penrhyn Quarry Railway which I’ll share in the next few weeks.
Found a new video of the Trillium Railway at the Port Colborne end. Looks like two covered hoppers are destined for the elevators at the south end of the railway
Gotta love the latest generation of HD video cameras!
In the past, the best way of understanding how the Port Colborne Railway was set up was from their parent company website: Trillium Railway. It had maps, photographs and information about the companies who ship via the PCHR. Unfortunately as of 2021, the website has been rebranded and much of the information has disappeared. I was able to make screen captures of the original maps and here is the lower part of the PCHR circa 2011:
To get a better feel how these are physically located, I’ve created a Google Map with the key parts of the PCHR marked on it:
An excellent resource for photos of the PCHR is Paul Duncan’s Niagara Rails website. Paul has divided his photographs up into two groups: one for the physical plant and one for trains on the physical plant. Here are the direct links for each of the sections of the PCHR (called spurs by the company):
There are a few videos of the Trillium Railway on the web. The following two videos from 2005 show Trillium Railway Engine #110 working the Canal Spur north of Dain City towards St Catharines. While they are not of the southern part of the PCHR, they do give a good flavour of the line circa 2005. The last two minutes of Part II show #110 crossing the liftbridge on the Canal Spur just east of Forks Junction.
Trillium Railway Part I (2005)
Trillium Railway Part II (2005)
The next two videos show trains shows trains moving strings of covered hoppers from Port Colborne. Unfortunately the video quality is not very high but you can see the types of covered hoppers used in the area. The first video highlights engines #108 and #168 while the second is engine #1859:
Trillium Railway #108 and #168 on Park Avenue, Port Colborne (2008)
Trillium Railway #1859 on Park Avenue, Port Colborne (2011?)
