I (Ben) am on a bit of a mission over the coming few years, to visit every preserved railway in North Wales. Top of the list was Fairbourne, the far side of the estuary from Barmouth. I even camped near this railway as a child, but for some reason never got round to visiting it. We did it as a matter of urgency because Fairbourne is scheduled to be abandoned (town, railway, and everything else) when the sea levels rise.
We tried earlier in the summer of 2021, but the weather was horrendous. The drive out to the terminus happily coincided with the one gap in the poor weather that day. After this, the rain got so heavy that we had to drive at 10mph as visibility was so low.
The other reasons to visit were two-fold; first, to get some photographs of the abandoned section of the line for a thread on RMWeb...
...and secondly to get research pics for a model making project that was on the boil over the summer. A full layout-build of a fictional seaside miniature line, for a competition run by Hornby, the layout took a lot of inspiration from Fairbourne. There'll be more on this in a forthcoming blog on the model-making thread soon incidentally, as it's due for a feature in the Feb 2022 British Railway Modelling mag.
The return visit later in August was rather more successful, weather-wise, and this time we rode the train from Fairbourne iteslf out for a picnic at the dunes.
OK so it still wasn't exactly suntan and beachball weather, but at least it wasn't chucking it down. We had originally toyed with doing the circular trip, where you walk over Barmouth Bridge and get the ferry over the estuary, but the weather didn't look too grand for later in the day so we settled for a train ride and a stroll.
The replica Darjeeling 'B' class was doing the honours alongside the replica of the Welsh Highland Railway "Russel". A really nice machine this, very eye-catching.
These were two very useful visits, and it's a nice little line. So far we've clocked about half of the preserved railways in North and West Wales, so we'll have to start planning on where to go in 2022...
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