On our last full day in Wales we rode the 25 mile long Welsh Highland Railway from Caernarfon to Porthmadog. The tracks are narrow gauge and the trains are pulled by steam locomotives. Because the route is so winding the locomotives are articulated. The round trip from Caernafon to Porthmadog is about five hours with a one-hour layover at Porthmadog. While purchasing our tickets I found the souvenir garment that I was looking for; a nice fleece jacket with Welsh Highland Railway crest embroidered on it.
While waiting for the train Karen noticed Buddleia (butterfly bush) was growing out of the crevices in the rock wall next to track. At our house she has to go to great effort to get it to grow in the garden.
The Welsh Highland Railway goes through the south side of Snowdonia. It is very scenic. There is plenty of opportunity to get pictures of mountains, valleys, farms, and sheep doing their thing. It is a single track railroad, but with traffic going in both directions. There are no signals on the wayside. I did not think about these facts until I saw a sign, as we entered a station, “End of Token Control”. Then it dawned on me. The railroad was un-signaled “dark territory”. A train would be allowed to enter a section of track only if the train driver had, in his hand, the token associated with that track section. The train drivers exchange tokens at the station at the center where the trains meet. Tokens are the oldest and now rarest form track occupancy permit used by railroads. We had quite an interesting discussion with the conductor about the Welsh Highland Railways control system. I don’t think he has this discussion with a customer very often. There is a picture of a train driver holding a token; it looks like a piece of pipe with a key hanging off of it. Before I retired I was responsible for building software for rail traffic control centers.
The train spends about an hour at Porthmadog where the locomotive is uncoupled from one end of the train and brought back to be coupled to the other end of the train, now the front end. We then started on our journey back to Caernarfon. But as we were pulling out of the station and while crossing a road the locomotive lost steam. We did not get explanation how that happened. But after a few minutes (it must have seemed like hours for the traffic waiting at the crossing) the train was pulled back into the station and the locomotive given a chance to build up steam again. The Welsh Highland Railway is steam powered, they have at least one diesel locomotive just in case.
During the return trip we ordered lunch. It was good but I don’t remember what it was. No Diet Coke or ginger beer with this lunch, we had Welsh hard cider and Welsh lager.
Not far from Caernarfon a fellow got on the train and struck up a conversation. He had a bag stuffed with cameras. He had noticed my Olympus EM5 which is fairly small camera with a retro look. The fellow thought that I was another film enthusiast. He had been waiting for the train to take pictures. We explained why it was late and that was when we learned about the backup diesel locomotive. The photographer never used digital, only film. So we had encountered a guy who was a “nut” squared; both a steam enthusiast and a film photography enthusiast.
After returning to Caernarfon we did our exploration of the castle.
Some pictures are at: https://goo.gl/photos/UzXb1e3GEhhNGMaTA