 Talyllyn Railway #7 in the Welsh mountains at Nant Gwernol |
I first
made the acquaintance of the Talyllyn Railway on a gray April Friday. My friend Samantha
and I had arrived in Britain four days earlier, and spent the first part of our trip
hiking the Pembrokshire Coast Trail in verdant and sun-drenched South Wales. Now,
however, we were in mid-Wales, driving on winding roads, past gray hills, under lowering
skies-- to the stone-built market town of Machynlleth, over the Afon Dyfi on an arch
bridge that dated back to Cromwell's time, then down the bank of the Dyfi estuary, from
the mountains to the sea. After reaching the coast at Aberdyfi, it was but a quick
turn up along the sea to Tywyn-- and the Talyllyn.
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 Talyllyn #7, the Tom Rolt, and driver pose at the end of track at Tywyn. |
On the
outskirts of Tywyn town, a small sign
pointed us to the left-- toward the Bay of Cardigan. The side-road rose sharply,
cresting some 50 yards later on a bridge over the main British Rail Cambrian Coast Line,
whose tracks we had been paralleling since leaving Machynlleth. And there, off to
the left, tucked into a tiny bowl of land between the high road into Tywyn and the
Cambrian Coast Line tracks paralleling it, lay the little Wharf terminus of the Talyllyn
Railway.
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 Talyllyn afternoon train ready for boarding at Wharf Station. |
Wharf
Station was not prepossessing. The
station building was low, brick-fronted, utilitarian-- truthfully, a bit drab. Yet a
quick walk through the station doors, past the ticket-agent's window and out onto the
platform unfolded a very different scene: spread out before me in a small bowl of land was
a living train garden, a recreation in miniature of the classic Victorian country
terminal. Beneath my feet, a slate-edged platform; overhead, a gingerbreaded
canopy. Before me to the left and right, a tiny but functional narrow-gauge terminal
yard, complete in every detail: a platform track, two passing sidings, a spur to a
water-tower, and one weed-grown spur curving off to a long parallel with the Cambrian
Coast Line right-of-way: the old slate interchange and transfer track. And then
there was the tunnel: just beyond the platform on the left the boarding track, spurs and
passing tracks all ran abruptly together in a tangle of turnouts to form a single main
line, which plunged immediately into a tunnel flanked by castellated masonry. On
closer inspect the "tunnel" proved to be a heavy masonry bridge, but the effect
was still the same. It was all that had been lacking to complete the impression of a
model, rather than a real, railway.
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 The 14:05 Talyllyn down train from Nant Gwernol pulls into the platform at Tywyn Wharf. |
I had
hardly had time to take in the scene when a
piercing whistle split the dampness of the air: in short order, a bright green tank
engine, running in reverse, loomed out from under the tunnel-like bridge. Clanking
loudly over the turnouts, the engine brought its string of red-liveried carriages into the
station. In short order, the driver and fireman had the motive power-- #7, an
0-4-2T whose bright brass nameplate proclaimed it to be the Tom Rolt-- cut off
from the string of carriages, and pulled into the pocket ready to run around the
consist. The 14:05 down train from Nant Gwernol had arrived-- and my trainspotting
holiday was underway.
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