Ffestiniog: Carriage #26

Ffestiniog Railway carriage #26 is a survivor with a checkered past. She began life not with the Ffestiniog at all, but with the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railway, a 2'-gauge line rich in scenery but weak in traffic which straggled from a standard-gauge connection at Dinas Junction southward into the mountains of western Snowdonia. Most likely, she was constructed as part of a famous order of semi-glazed "summer coaches" delivered in 1894, but no one can now identify her exact roster number.

In the 1920s optimistic promoters purchased the struggling NWNGR and forged a connection between its rails and an industrial railway running north from Porthmadog. The combined lines formed the new Welsh Highland Railway, a 2' gauge through road connecting Porthmadog directly to Dinas Junction. The sponsors' hoped-for surge in tourist and holiday traffic never materialized, however, and operation of the near-bankrupt concern was taken over by the Ffestiniog. WHR equipment was renumbered to fit into the FR scheme, and it was at that time that #26 acquired her current identity.

Even under the Ffestiniog's auspices the star-crossed WHR could not achieve solvency, and the railway was abandoned in 1937. In the months and years afterward, the WHR's equipment was scattered to the four winds. Carriage #26 survived by serving as a chicken coop in a farmyard outside Dinas, deprived of trucks and exposed to the open air.

In 1958 friends of the revived FR located #26 in her exile, and arranged for her purchase and transport to Porthmadog. Upon inspection her original body was found to be rotted beyond repair, but FR elected to craft for her a new body following the general outline of the old, and also scared up a pair of bogies from scrapped FR coach #21 for her to ride on. It is in this much-modified form that she serves patrons today as part of FR's regular-service semi-open car fleet.

1. Porthmadog Quay		6. Blaenau
2. Quarry Engine		7. Fairlie's Patent
3. The Longest Grade		8. Downhill Run
4. On Dwyryd's Flank		9. Evening Chores
5. Deviation