 Iarll maneuvers out along the Cob. |
For
passengers like me the ride was over, but a
railwayman's work is never done. While the carriages disgorged their happy
patrons, Iarll's crew was hard at work preparing for one last twilight assault on
the hill. After watering and fueling their locomotive at the servicing stand by the
end of the platform, Colin and Michelle brought the Fairlie back though yard throat and
out onto the Cob. A few throws of the levers on the ground frame, and the switches
were soon lined to bring the big engine back in against the train.
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 Bringing 'round the headlamp.  Detail of a Fairlie at rest. |
After
helping Colin back down and make the couple,
Michelle climbed up on the engine frame to take the white headlamp down from the rear
firebox. Carrying it around to the two-headed locomotive's other end, she clamped it
securely back into its brackets atop the front smokebox, thus ceremonially "changing
ends" for the uphill run. While Michelle tended to her chores, Colin tended to
his, making his way around the running gear with the oilcan, feeling each of the bearings
for heat and applying a dose of lubricant wherever needed. Content to be so
pampered, the Iarll Meirionnydd steamed quietly to herself, with wisps of vapor
escaping from the cylinder cocks and wafting gently around the big bogie driving wheels.
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 Fireman Michelle Gammidge pauses between evening chores.
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Work
done at last if only for a moment, Michelle
mounted the engine's cab to take her ease, and rest before the hard work she'd have soon
have to do keeping up steam during the day's final uphill run. I took her rest as an
indication to go seek my own. Taking my leave reluctantly from the platform, I
passed out through the depot and left the Ffestiniog behind. A short bridge led over
the Afon Glaslyn to the mainland, and from there I made my way along Porthmadog's
high street past the shops and stores, and on to the Cambrian Coast Line standard-gauge
station at the other end of town. At the slab-sided old Cambrian Railways depot a
Central Trains diesel car soon called, which carried me back down through Minffordd for
the last time, across the Afon Dwyryd, past medieval Harlech Castle and on towards my
lodgings in Barmouth. Yet even as the diesel train throbbed on its way, I knew I had
left part of my heart back in Porthmadog, where the tall Fairlie engines of the Queen of
the Narrow Gauge still steam boldly forth to carry their passengers to high Blaenau
Ffestiniog. It's a good place to leave a piece of your heart, for it means that
someday, somehow you'll have to return to reclaim it. For me, that someday can't
come too soon.
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