Ffestiniog Railway

The railway company is properly known as the "Festiniog Railway Company". The single F spelling is in the official title of the company in the local act, the Festiniog Railway Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. xlviii), that created the railway. It is the oldest surviving railway company in the world (although not the oldest working railway – a record that goes to the Middleton Railway, in Leeds), having been founded by the act of Parliament on 23 May 1832 with capital mostly raised in Dublin by Henry Archer, the company's first secretary and managing director. Most British railways were amalgamated into four large groups in 1921 and then into British Railways in 1948 but the Festiniog Railway…

in the late 1950s/early 1960s. The replacement FR line is in the foreground.]] Between 1965 and 1978, the Ffestiniog Railway Deviation, a 2+1/2 mi long diversionary route, was constructed between Dduallt and Tanygrisiau to avoid the Ffestiniog hydro-electric power station and its reservoir (Llyn Ystradau). The Deviation (this is the conventional name for such railway works) was built mostly by volunteers. At the southern end is the Dduallt spiral formation which is unique on a public railway in the United Kingdom. Including a bridge, it was constructed entirely by volunteers, and gains an initial height rise of 35 ft in order (after a further 1 mile of new volunteer-built railway and a new…

One of the earliest references to tourism is in the LNWR Tourist Guide for 1876, which waxed lyrical about the Ffestiniog Railway, which it illustrated with a drawing of a lady in Welsh National Dress (then still in regular local use) travelling on an FR up train (since many empty slate wagons – with two standing brakesmen – were attached at the rear) with the caption "On the Ffestiniog Railway". The guide uses the "double F" spelling throughout. It was, however, in the inter-war years from 1919 to 1939 that tourism, though always valued, came to acquire a major importance. Since restoration commenced in 1954, tourism has been the only significant source of income. The role of the…