page_title: Ffestiniog Railway
section_title: Horse and gravity operation
hierarchical_section_title: Ffestiniog Railway / History / Horse and gravity operation
caption_attribution_description: English: One-inch map showing route of Festiniog Railway abiout 1840. This is a composite of one-inch sheet 75ne (published1840) with an inlay from sheet 75se (published 1838). It shows the inclined plane that was used until the Moelwyn tunnel was bult in 1842
context_page_description: The Ffestiniog Railway is a 1 ft 11 ¹⁄₂ in narrow-gauge heritage railway, located in Gwynedd, Wales. It is a major tourist attraction located mainly within the Snowdonia National Park.
  The railway is roughly 13 ¹⁄₂ miles long and runs from the harbour at Porthmadog to the slate mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, travelling through forested and mountainous scenery. The line is single track throughout with four intermediate passing places. The first mile of the line out of Porthmadog runs atop an embankment called the Cob, which is the dyke of the Traeth Mawr polder.
  The Festiniog Railway Company, which owns the railway, is the oldest surviving railway company in the world. It also owns the Welsh Highland Railway, which was re-opened fully in 2011. The two railways share the same track gauge and meet at Porthmadog station, with occasional trains working the entire 40-mile route from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Caernarfon.
context_section_description: The line was constructed between 1833 and 1836 to transport slate from the quarries around the inland town of Blaenau Ffestiniog to the coastal town of Porthmadog where it was loaded onto ships. The railway was graded so that loaded wagons could be run by gravity downhill all the way from Blaenau Ffestiniog to the port. The empty wagons were hauled back up by horses, which travelled down in special 'dandy' wagons. To achieve this continuous grade (about 1 in 80 for much of the way), the line followed natural contours and employed cuttings and embankments built of stone and slate blocks without mortar. Prior to the completion in 1842 of a long tunnel through a spur in the Moelwyn Mountain, the slate trains were worked over the top via inclines (designed by Robert Stephenson), the site of which can still be seen although there are few visible remnants.
  Up to six trains daily were operated in each direction and a printed timetable was published on 16 September 1856 by Charles Easton Spooner who, following his father, served as Manager and Clerk for 30 years. It shows departures from the Quarry Terminus (later referred to as Dinas, sometimes as Rhiwbryfdir or Rhiw) at 7:30, 9:28, 11:16, 1:14, 3:12 and 5:10. Trains waited ten minutes at the intermediate stations called Tunnel Halt, Hafod y Llyn and Rhiw Goch. The fastest journey time from Quarry Terminus to Boston Lodge was 1 hour 32 minutes, including three stops. From Boston Lodge, the slate wagons were hauled to and from Porthmadog harbour by horses. Up trains took nearly six hours from Boston Lodge to the Quarry Terminus and each train ran in up to four sections, each hauled by a horse and comprising eight empty slate wagons plus a horse dandy. This timetable gave a maximum annual capacity of 70,000 tons of dressed slate. Two brakesmen travelled on each down train, controlling the speed by the application of brakes as needed. At passing loops, trains passed on the right and this continues to be a feature of Ffestiniog Railway operation.
  There is evidence for tourist passengers being carried as early as 1850 without the blessing of the Board of Trade, but these journeys would also observe the timetable.
  Hafod y Llyn was replaced by Tan y Bwlch around 1872. Dinas (Rhiw) Station and much of that branch is now all but buried under slate waste; the rest of the Dinas branch line was removed about 1954–55. Occasional confusion arises because places named Hafod y Llyn Isaf and Dinas also exist on the Welsh Highland Railway, albeit 10 miles (16 km) or more to the northwest of those on the FR.
caption: One-inch map of the route of the Ffestiniog Railway about 1840, showing the inclined plane that was used until the Moelwyn tunnel was built in 1842
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