Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways

Thanks DJH, that's pretty quick. Has there been fettling on the Dinas-Waunfawr section as well? Seemed to be pretty brisk in parts there too. Getting the overall journey time down has to be a priority on a line of this length to prevent the boredom factor setting in with younger visitors!

 

Can't see it myself, 25mph speed limit on heritage lines, secondly I wouldn't wont to be going faster in some of those carriages, I am not saying they are unsafe or anything either, its just they are not designed for speed and going faster bring in to play a much higher safety level.

 

The WHR and its stock are designed for 25mph running. Hence, for example, the deviation at Croesor Junction avoiding a PSR had the original course been followed.

 

When mention is made of speeding up the journey, of course what is meant is to get as much of the line as possible up to 25mph. There were many restrictictons to 20 or 15mph for various reasons, these are gradually being attended to.

 

The section from Waunfawr to Rhyd Ddu has definitely been speeded up. It used to be a real stagger with the loco just coasting along, now it has to work along that section.
I remember when the line was still in it's infancy there were (tentative) plans to have the garratts running from Port to Caernarfon in an hour, pretty much line speed all the way. That would have been impressive!

 

My fault I should of phrased it better. 40mph is what was thought to have been achieved in South Africa. On the Welsh Highland the maximum speed is 25mph as per the light railway order. On the pont croesor section it is more 20mph and it may feel faster as there are quite a few 10 and 15 mph sections earlier in the journey. Aside from making it a much smoother journey phase 3 and other works have been more about getting sustained running speeds eg removing a 10 mph then 5mph then 10mph section to all 10mph. There are sections that I wouldn't want a garratt going linespeed on as there are quite a few sharp curves! There are also a number of permanent speed restrictions on certain sections eg near pont croesor with the level crossing. After a bit of searching I found it up on the Welsh Highland Project page the article I referred to earlier in the thread. It is:

http://www.whrsoc.org.uk/WHRProject/Rheilffordd_Eryri.pdf

Regards
Duncan

 

Only Dinas-Caernarfon is governed by a Light Railway Order, the remainder is authorised by a Transport & Works Order. Neither order nor their enabling legislation mention operating speed. It is a common misconception that the existance of an LRO sets the speed. With some exceptions, this is not one, operating speed is set by the inspecting officer. The GCR has an LRO yet has dispensation to run at 60mph under certain conditions.
Parts of the WHR have been set out for 25mph. Hafod y Llyn-Afon Nanmor is currently operated at 15mph, Afon Nanmor-Pont Croesor at 20mph. In my estimation the old Croesor Junction alignment would have been 5mph.
Peter Johnson

 

Thanks for the extra information Peter. Couldn't remember what it had changed over to for the other phases so thank you for clarifying it.

Regards
Duncan

 

I think this is perhaps an underrated aspect of the WHR, going by whats been uploaded to youtube - that said there's been a couple of clips uploaded this evening by 'Rickstew' which have come some way to rectify this; here and here.

The restart from the campsite halt at the end of the first clip is quite something! If a Garratt makes that much noise up 1 in 40, the two cylinder NG15's should be spectacular...

Chris

 

I guess 87 being coal fired probably makes a differnce.

Having travelled behind an NG15 at Sandstone and on the Avontuur branch, I can confirm that they make a fine sound when working hard.

 

Make a difference to what....it make a difference to me, being the fireman, but the oil fired 16s have just as much grunt as 87 does, though 87 is mechanically the better engine at the moment. She is louder though as she has a Lempor exhaulst and the others do not.

 

This is interesting. I recently visited the WHR and I used the profile diagram on the WHR website as a guide to where to go for filming. The profile diagram isn't a gradient profile in that it doesn't actually say what the gradients are, but it does give a very good pictorial view of the profile. The steepest part of the line on that profile is from Beddgelert into the forest, but I didn't have the time to explore this section much and I pretty well made an assumption that a train would be obscured by trees while in the forest and therefore there would less point in doing that. I think that next year, when I go again, I'll devote some time to the forest, but it is private land and there are no public rights-of-way across it which might make things more difficult.

Perhaps the WHR webmaster might consider updating the website to include gradients and speed restrictions?

Regards

 

There is a complete profile on the old 'official' website here, found under 'Route of the WHR' at its new home of http://www.whrsoc.org.uk/WHRProject/

Regarding the forest, there's no lack of paths and tracks which you can walk, some of which cross the line multiple times as this map of the upper s-bend area shows - the trackbed is shown as a brown dotted line.

Chris

 

Thanks for the info, it'll come in very useful next year and it explains why some of my sequences this year were much quieter than I expected!

Regards

 

I had the opportunity to film a train heading up-grade from Beddgelert last weekend, quite spectacular, with lots of slipping and impressive acceleration considering the reverse curves and severity of the grade, it can be viewed here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhJQ__V3mK0

As Orion mentioned, the trees & other undergrowth can obscure some of the action, therefore a visit this winter will be on the cards!!

Cheers

Alan

 

There cant be many better locations than the lower s-bend! Where else can you stand in one place and within a couple of minutes hear a train restarting from a station below you, then get a shot of it climbing up and past you, then two more shots behind and above you, all up a 1 in 40 gradient?

Superb Alan, thanks for uploading. Have you any more videos of the WHR?

Chris

 

Alan's video was inspiring! The ruined stone cottage at the end was interesting. What fun to buy that and do it up: great place to view the trains go by

 

Try this one from earlier this month...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evei__VOPng