2015 July - 150th Party Celebrations

Special guests, special trains, special event for our very special railway's 150th Party which took place over 3rd, 4th and 5th July 2015


A new first for the World's First Preserved Railway - visiting locos of a different gauge in live steam. Our special guests for the weekend are 'Prince' visiting us from the Festiniog Railway, and 'Russell' from the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway. Their 1 ft 11 1⁄2 in gauge meant that we had to build seperate tracks for them to run on at Wharf. Russell is paying a return visit to Tywyn as it was on outside static display at Wharf for several years before moving to the Welsh Highland Railway Ltd (now the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway) for restoration in 1965. We're very pleased to see Russell return in steam!

Special trains over the weekend have included the 'Sesquicentenarian', slate trains, shuttles, Llechfan garden railway running, Weighbridge demonstrations, lots of photo opportunities at Wharf including a night shoot, and of course a beer tent with many ales on offer. Prince and Russell have been pootling up and down their tracks giving footplate rides in between posing for photos in the sun.

On Saturday morning, for the first time as far as we know, all five of our available steam engines were lit up at the same time. You can watch how the proceedings went via our webcam - go to Saturday 6am. They all had to ready to head to Wharf for their photo shoot with Russell and Prince. Following this our locos headed back to Pendre as a five engine cavalcade. No 3 Sir Haydn wasn't left out as she came down to Wharf and spent the day parked on the coal road.

Wharf was packed on Saturday night for the Hog Roast, luckily the weather held off for the celebration party.

Many thanks to the Party Organisers for arranging such a fab event, and many thanks are due to the Festiniog Railway and the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway for letting us borrow their engines for this very special weekend.

More about Russell from the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway website

More about Prince from the Festipedia website

Photos by Martin Lester, Pete Mintoft, Darren Turner, Karen Willans, Andrew Young - more photos to follow.