page_title: Nantlle Railway
section_title: Rolling stock
hierarchical_section_title: Nantlle Railway / Rolling stock
caption_attribution_description: Abstract: Loaded horse-drawn carts in front of castle.
context_page_description: The Nantlle Railway was a Welsh narrow gauge railway. It was built to carry slate from several slate quarries across the Nantlle Valley to the harbour at Caernarfon for export by sea. The line provided a passenger service between Caernarfon and Talysarn from 1856 to 1865. It was the first public railway to be operated in North Wales.
  A tramway linking the Nantlle slate quarries to Caernarfon was proposed in the 1810s. The Nantlle Railway was authorised by an Act of Parliament in May 1825, and the company began construction of the railway. The line was designed and constructed by George Stephenson and his son, Robert. The line opened in 1828 and was operated using horses.
  During the 1860s and 1870s, a portion of the line was replaced by the standard gauge branch of the London and North Western Railway which acquired the line in the late 1860s. The Nantlle Railway was closed in 1963 by British Railways, when it was the last line to be operated by BR using horse traction. Much of the route has been overlaid with roads or obliterated by other developments, but several railway structures remain.
context_section_description: The narrow gauge line was a wagonway constructed to a gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) and equipped with four wheeled wagons fitted with double-flanged wheels, which were loose on fixed axles. For many of their later years many wagons had extended axles which protruded beyond the wheels. Some wagons had eyes bolted to the tops of their sides to enable them to be lifted bodily by the Blondins used in some of the quarries. The wagons were owned by the tramway, rather than the quarries and the many that survived into BR ownership had narrow steel plate bodies, which were mounted between the wheels and bolted to the axles. Their shape and structure appears to have changed little from the railway's earliest years.
caption: Caernarfon slate quay with a loaded wagon and stacks of slates
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