Feel that I appear to make rather a lot of posts on Railway History & Nostalgia, to do with the Tallylyn Railway in its eighty-five years of pre-preservation history; but it does strike me that, especially for such an essentially modest and out-of-the-way concern: the TR has in its career, produced perhaps more than its fair share of oddities and tantalising queries.
One such recently come to mind for me, involves a long-standing item of prominent tourism-fodder in this particular corner of Gwynedd. There features here, the business of access for visitors to Tal-y-llyn Lake and its imposing mountainous close surroundings. In the days before widespread car ownership, frequent excursions were run -- public and private -- to and round the Lake; involving use of the Talyllyn Railway and / or its 2ft. 3in. gauge "twin" the Corris Railwary, and in the rail-less high country between the two, wherein the Lake lies, using road transport -- originally horse-drawn, later employing "multi-occupant" motor vehicles. With this traffic being a regular feature; it went without saying that people would conceive schemes to facilitate and increase it, by extending the two narrow-gauge railways and linking them with each other, with the new rail route running alongside, and serving, the Lake.
Such schemes flourished particularly, around the turn of the 19th / 20th centuries. I had had in my mind: that I'd read of a particularly enterprising version thereof, which envisaged not only extending the railways from their upper reaches, and physically linking them; but of using electric traction for the whole new narrow-gauge system thus created -- electrifying the hitherto-steam existing lines; the new part, electric from the outset (whether sticking with 2ft. 3in. -- or converting to some other gauge -- was envisaged, I wasn't sure). Metre-gauge doings in Switzerland in the minds of folk at the time, perhaps? But: if I ever did read about this "electrification" element in such schemes -- I've seen nothing about it, in various recent reading to do with the Talyllyn and Corris lines. L.T.C. Rolt in Railway Adventure -- during what, in the book, he acknowledges to be a rapid trot through the TR's pre-1951 history, not claiming it to be blow-by-blow chronicling -- just writes: "[excursion via the Lake] traffic grew steadily ... an estimate of its importance may be gathered from the proposal to construct an extension railway from Abergynolwyn via Talyllyn Lake to the Corris Railway at Upper Corris. It would have involved a line costly to build and difficult to work, but ... [noteworthy that] it was seriously advanced with an eye to tourist attraction alone ..." ; he says nothing about the electrification aspect.
Am finding self wondering whether I have ever in fact read in any work on the Talyllyn / Corris topic, about dreams thus, on anyone's part a century-plus ago, of electric narrow gauge between Tywyn and Machynlleth; or whether this whole "electric" thing was -- from my reading long ago, as above, less way-out stuff on the "mooted extension" theme -- in fact a flight of fancy of my own: which memory, fading and distorting itself over the decades, has led me to think erroneously that I actually read about, in who-now-knows-what book touching on the subject. I'd be grateful for input from anyone: best of all, if possible, informing either that the business has been written about and published (citing the work concerned); or from a very well-informed student of the Welsh narrow gauge, confirming that they've never seen anything in print about any electrification scheme -- suggesting that in fact I did dream it up "out of whole cloth".
One such recently come to mind for me, involves a long-standing item of prominent tourism-fodder in this particular corner of Gwynedd. There features here, the business of access for visitors to Tal-y-llyn Lake and its imposing mountainous close surroundings. In the days before widespread car ownership, frequent excursions were run -- public and private -- to and round the Lake; involving use of the Talyllyn Railway and / or its 2ft. 3in. gauge "twin" the Corris Railwary, and in the rail-less high country between the two, wherein the Lake lies, using road transport -- originally horse-drawn, later employing "multi-occupant" motor vehicles. With this traffic being a regular feature; it went without saying that people would conceive schemes to facilitate and increase it, by extending the two narrow-gauge railways and linking them with each other, with the new rail route running alongside, and serving, the Lake.
Such schemes flourished particularly, around the turn of the 19th / 20th centuries. I had had in my mind: that I'd read of a particularly enterprising version thereof, which envisaged not only extending the railways from their upper reaches, and physically linking them; but of using electric traction for the whole new narrow-gauge system thus created -- electrifying the hitherto-steam existing lines; the new part, electric from the outset (whether sticking with 2ft. 3in. -- or converting to some other gauge -- was envisaged, I wasn't sure). Metre-gauge doings in Switzerland in the minds of folk at the time, perhaps? But: if I ever did read about this "electrification" element in such schemes -- I've seen nothing about it, in various recent reading to do with the Talyllyn and Corris lines. L.T.C. Rolt in Railway Adventure -- during what, in the book, he acknowledges to be a rapid trot through the TR's pre-1951 history, not claiming it to be blow-by-blow chronicling -- just writes: "[excursion via the Lake] traffic grew steadily ... an estimate of its importance may be gathered from the proposal to construct an extension railway from Abergynolwyn via Talyllyn Lake to the Corris Railway at Upper Corris. It would have involved a line costly to build and difficult to work, but ... [noteworthy that] it was seriously advanced with an eye to tourist attraction alone ..." ; he says nothing about the electrification aspect.
Am finding self wondering whether I have ever in fact read in any work on the Talyllyn / Corris topic, about dreams thus, on anyone's part a century-plus ago, of electric narrow gauge between Tywyn and Machynlleth; or whether this whole "electric" thing was -- from my reading long ago, as above, less way-out stuff on the "mooted extension" theme -- in fact a flight of fancy of my own: which memory, fading and distorting itself over the decades, has led me to think erroneously that I actually read about, in who-now-knows-what book touching on the subject. I'd be grateful for input from anyone: best of all, if possible, informing either that the business has been written about and published (citing the work concerned); or from a very well-informed student of the Welsh narrow gauge, confirming that they've never seen anything in print about any electrification scheme -- suggesting that in fact I did dream it up "out of whole cloth".
Last edited:
