 Poised and trim, FR 2-4-0 Linda pants at the ready beside the Porthmadog depot. |
From
out over the Cob there came a moving dot of
smoke, which soon resolved itself into an engine-- a trim little tank locomotive. The
gleaming red nameplate on her side proclaimed her to be Linda, and she proved the
oddest engine I had yet seen in Wales. Clearly, she was old: inclined cylinders,
slide valves and a tall capped stack all suggested a birth date sometime in the last
century. Even so, her heavy outside frame and counterweights gave her a tough, no-nonsense
appearance. A short rigid wheelbase suggested a former life as a switch engine,
probably an 0-4-0T-- and so she had been, having served sixty-five hard years on the
Penrhyn Railway, shuttling slate from the forbidding Penrhyn
quarries down to the sea near Bangor before coming to FR rails in 1962. Yet now
she stood transformed. A sporting pony truck supplemented her close-set twin
drivers, while a trim fuel tender trailed incongruously but proudly behind the
cab. Touched by the wizards of the Ffestiniog's Boston Lodge works, the lady of
Penrhyn had been reborn as proud road locomotive of that uniquely narrow-gauge type, the
2-4-0.
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|
 Linda's dapper fireman quenches her thirst at the depot water tower. |
Whistle
chirping and cylinder-cocks sighing, Linda
picked her way delicately through the turnouts and back to the tall water tower and oiling
tanks beyond the station. There the fireman-- a fine, Victorian figure of a man--
climbed down off the footplate and mounted the tank to give his charge a drink. A tall
fellow, he towered over the little engine, yet the even so they seemed quite the
pair. Every hue in the man's dress echoed a corresponding shade in the engine's:
black boots matched the gleaming black boiler, blue-gray slacks accented the pinstriping
on the cab, a bright red cravat echoed the cheerful red pilot beam. Engine and
fireman alike looked dressed to the nines, and ready to make each run a celebration.
|
|
 Connecting the vacuum brakes. |
Her
thirst quenched, Linda soon
trundled back across the Quay. Leaning from the cab, driver Paul Davis threaded his
charge through the throat of the yard and backed slowly down against the consist parked
hard by the station platform. The fireman guided his colleague to a coupling, and
then leaned in to couple the thick, corrugated hoses of the vacuum braking line.
Ready for departure with time to spare, driver and fireman alike set to polishing Linda's
brass and brightwork to an even finer gleam.
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|
  Two perspectives on a former quarry engine: Linda at the Porthmadog platform track.
|
While
the crew attended to their polishing, I
attended to my tickets. The agent's window was located behind a traditional
iron-barred grille inside the tall, shadowed hallway of the main Harbor Station
building. Not everything about the agent's office was equally antique: after I
handed over my 12 pounds 50 for a return ticket to Blaenau, the agent rattled off a few
quick strokes on a keyboard, and a computer-generated ticket form spat from a nearby
printer. FR enjoys far and away the greatest patronage of any of the Welsh
narrow-gauge lines, in part through sustained attention to marketing and promotion by a
savvy staff of volunteer and professional agents. Clearly I had just encountered a
fairly sophisticated yield management system. In the off season, FR operating
managers and marketers would no doubt pour over the load factors and revenues for each
train, recorded at the time of sale into a ticketing database. Train schedules,
fares and promotions for the next season would then be adjusted
accordingly.
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