Welsh Highland (Porthmadog) Opening

It was like Christmas Day at Gelert's Farm on the morning of the 23rd March. If you'd walked across the yard at eight o'clock, most people were up...... and buzzing like children on Christmas Morning with smiles of "he's been".

Many of us were looking for the catch...... but in the end, everything went like clockwork, and with almost no deviation from the script. Gelert and Prince rolled into the station at ten o'clock, and lined up side by side for
photographers from the press, and not too long afterwards, a packed full train set off for Pen-y-Mount.

The opening ceremony took place at Pen-y-Mount, with James Hewett, John Prideaux (Chairman of the Festiniog Railway Company) and Dafydd Elis Thomas (Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales) delivering their speeches from a podium wagon parked in the loop...... before James invited Dafydd Elis Thomas to drive Gelert through the banner stretched across the track to officially open the line.

We'd experimented with the banner the afternoon before, using a similar blank 12 foor length of the same laminated paper. The best way for the loco to break through it, we discovered, was to put two modest sized cuts at the top and bottom of the sheet. This had been done for the real thing...... but we'd reckoned without the wind......

Thus it was that when we stretched the banner across
the track, it billowed out like a sail, then started to rip slowly into two.
Many of us on the platform were quietly calling out to ourselves "just get the loco over here before the wind gets there first!"

But in the end, we needn't have worried. Gelert eased forward, with our guest driver at the regulator. The smile on Lord Elis Thomas's face said it all - he was so impressed that he asked to stay on the footplate all the way to the end of the line and back to Gelerts Farm.

Several people said they are still having double take moments at seeing the train trundling across the Traeth - returning on one of the afternoon trains, I found myself saying "we're on the wrong side of Pen-y-Mount station", before realising that the train now has a new terminus.

The buffet in the Big Shed drew many favourable comments - Non Williams (Cafe Manager) and her team had put on such an impressive spread that as people arrived, that its reputation spread around town. One member ventured into Porthmadog late in the afternoon and found himself in conversation with the owner of one shop. "You're from the Welsh Highland are you?" she said. "I heard you had a wonderful buffet this lunchtime!"

Great fun had by all, and the sun shone (despite the weather forecast) for most of the day. Much amusement was had when we discovered that Prince was being crewed by four people, three of whom were called David!

Photos have started appearing at http://www.pontcroesor.co.uk