The Padarn Railway started in the 1840's with a 4ft gauge line, the Penrhyn with a gauge half that in the 1870s.
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Against the background of the rise and fall of the North Wales slate industry, this book traces the history of two narrow gauge railways running from neighbouring Caernarvonshire quarries down to the Menai Straits, the Padarn and Penrhyn railways.
Both were privately operated slate railways serving identical purposes in often widely different fashions. They began as horse-worked tramroads linking their respective quarry and port; both were replaced by steam-worked lines — the Padarn in the 1840s with a 4ft gauge line, the Penrhyn with a gauge half that in the 1870s.
Full details are given of the operation of both lines, their locomotives, rolling stock and workmen’s passenger services (a unique feature of the last being the Padarn’s manually powered velocipedes). The author traces the closely parallel his¬tories of the Dinorwic and Penrhyn Quarries — once the giants of the world’s slate trade — and Port Dinorwic and Port Penrhyn, with details of their working and of the locomotives which laboured along their 1ft 10%in gauge tracks.
Although both railways closed over ten years ago (within nine months of each other and steam-worked to the end) their story is brought up to date with locations given of all major preserved relics and a history of the tourist line recently opened on part of the trackbed of the Padarn, the Llanberis Lake Railway.