 Taking on water at Nantyronen Halt. |
The
meadows of Rheidol Vale now gave way to
woodlands, and our harder-working engine led us through dark stands of pine and occasional
groves of tall hardwoods. Each such grove seemed to have its own name, which the
guidebook spelled out with care: Rhiwarthen, Tanyrallt, and loveliest of all,
Coed-troed-rhiw-Seiri. The trackbed rose and fell, as stiff cuts through the
shoulders of protruding hillsides alternated with gentler grades along level
plateaus. At one of these levels, a sudden drop in the pitch of #8s exhaust signaled
an imminent halt. The whistle shrilled for a level crossing, and then we eased to a
stop by a rust-streaked iron watertank. This was Nantyronen Halt; once there was a
thriving country depot here, with a station and a goods-siding of its own. All that
remains is the watertank, and a quiet highland meadow sheltering under the steep hillsides
of Tyllwyd-isaf.
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refilled, we set out on the last leg of the
journey, the bitter climb to Devil's Bridge. Here the Rheidol shows a very different
spirit from the gentle Talyllyn. Though built for steam working, the 1860s-era
Talyllyn is laid out in the style of an old horse-worked mineral tramway. Except for
the final stretch to Nant Gwernol, the adhesion portion of the line has only moderate
grades, suitable to working either by horses or by small Victorian steam locomotives.
The really heavy climbing is concentrated by design in the now-abandoned inclined
planes, which could be served by larger, more capacious stationary steam boilers.
When Edwardian engineers laid out the Rheidol in 1902, they showed vastly greater
confidence in the brute hauling power of steam adhesion locomotives. From Nantyronen
up to Devil's Bridge, the line is one continuous series of near 2% grades and torturous
reverse-curves.
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first of those grades confronted us just
yards beyond the Nantyronen halt: a stiff 2.08% grade with a sharp S-curve which takes the
line up and out of the Nantyronen meadow, and back onto the mountain shoulders. Now
#8 really showed her mettle, and I began to understand why John Gwynne, the wise Railtrack
dispatcher with whom I had spoken at Machynlleth at the start of the day, had urged me to
ride the very first carriage of the up train. From right behind the locomotive,
every beat of the 2-6-2's staccato exhaust shuddered clear through the entire
carriage. The floorboards shook, and the door windows rattled in their frames.
At each curve I could see a pillar of exhaust steam jetting from #8's copper-capped
smokestack, shooting straight up and out to create a veritable thunderhead above the
engine. With her cylinder cocks still cracked to blow out condensation after the halt, the
engine was wreathed in steam from the sides as well--an effect too spectacular to capture
easily in words.
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rattled through a long passing siding at
Aberffrwd, and then the track swung rightwards into a narrower valley-- we were entering
the Cwm Rheidol, the Rheidol Valley proper. Across the deep valley floor, the
mountainside opposite showed harsh scars from the lead mining which had been the
foundation of the Rheidol's first prosperity. Old tramway grades snaked across the
face of the hillsides, and long dumps of tailings cascaded down below them onto the valley
floor. Nothing grew in the tailings, and their long, lobate patterns made great
gashes in the green of the Welsh mountains. On our own side of the valley we passed
from time to time an open adit or mine pithead-- dark fenced-off holes leading deep into
the mountainside on the right-hand side of the track, with mounds of tailings spilling
down and away into the valley on the left.
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succeeded grade and curve followed curve. My
ears began to dull from the constant pounding of the engine's exhaust, the squeal of the
flanges on the curves, and the groan of the metal carriage frame as it transmitted the
engine's fierce tug to the coaches behind us. Now, as we neared Cwm Rheidol's
headlands, we reached the line's most torturous stretch. The trackbed commenced a
series of incredibly sharp reverse turns: sweeping in toward the hillside and up steep
tributary valleys, screaming through hairpin bends across the tributary streams, and then
swooping left again to claw out back to the main valley. Any one of these curves
would have put standard-gauge equipment straight onto the ground: only the 1' 11.5"
gauge allowed our engine's wheels to keep track around the bends. Even so, the
difference in circumference between the inside and outside rails of the curves ensured
that our engine's outside drivers necessarily slipped along the outside rail, setting up a
piercing protest at each and every bend.
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length the brutal series of grades, curves,
and horseshoe bends gave way to a stretch of gentler running along a high rock ledge-- a
pretty spot of woods and wildlands which form part of the Coed Rheidol (Rheidol Forest)
Nature Reserve. One last swing to the right and suddenly the ground rushed up and in
from either hand, and we were blasting through a deep rock cutting. Beyond the cut
we rattled across the open floor of a kind of rock amphitheater-- the floor of the old
Rheidol quarry, once a center also for lead smelting and textile mills. At the far
side of the quarry floor the rocks rose up and again and it was back out through another
cut. Then, with surprising suddenness, the train slowed, the carriage wheels
clattered through two sets of switch points, and we were gliding to a stop at a small
coachyard nestled into a level patch of hillside. We had reached Devil's Bridge, and
the end of the line.
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