Prototype Railroads

Posts about prototype railways.

Design Flavour for the MQR

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
Felin Fawr 1962

Hendurnpike Crossing

Just west of Coed-y-Parc, Hendurnpike featured a picturesque road crossing. The original crossing guard’s shed was still standing in 2013!

Hendurnpike Crossing 1962
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.

Port Penrhyn 1961
Port Penrhyn 1961
Port Penrhyn 1963
Port Penrhyn 1963

2012-05-12 Trillium Railway North

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.

Riding the Little Trains of Wales

“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:

  1. the Llanberis Lake Railway
  2. the Welsh Highland Railway
  3. the Ffestiniog Railway
  4. the Talyllyn Railway

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

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.

Introducing the Marchlyn Quarry Railway (MQR)

7/8″ Scale Live Steam Engine – Oakshaak

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.