Today’s Treasures – Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway
The Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway is one of the ‘Great Little Trains of Wales’ operating on a gauge of 2’6”. It opened in 1903 and carried goods, livestock and passengers until it closed in 1956. A preservation society was formed and, by 1981, the line was restored to its present 8 mile length, running from Llanfair Caereinion Station, alongside the river Banwy and over the Golfa Hill to Welshpool’s Raven Square Station. There once was a link across the town to the standard gauge railway at Welshpool Station.
The little steam train arrives to collect its passengers waiting patiently in vintage carriages with open windows letting in a gentle breeze. The train travels through wonderful Welsh countryside, a buzzard soars overhead, squawking crossly at the train for scaring its prey away; pheasants scatter across the fields, the engine toots and the sheep scarper, lambs’ tails bobbing.
A flash of blue as a kingfisher perches above the River Berwyn, bubbling across pebbles, dashing over rocks, swirling in deep eddies, caressing the reeds and grasses along the river banks bordered with Himalayan Balsam, pink blossoms, blowing in the breeze.
Click, clack, clickety clunk, the train puffs up the hill, slowing down for farm tracks and road crossings, abandoned stations and disused sidings, forging through farmland, past fields and hedges, streams and ditches, sheep and cows lazily grazing, or sleeping in the shade of ancient oaks. Past isolated farms and barns, tractors busy haymaking in the sunshine.
Tea and cakes at Llanfair Caereinion Station then all aboard for the return trip to Welshpool. Volunteers on vintage trains, shovelling coal, building up steam, whistle blowing, the carriages creak and groan as the train rattles along the tracks, across embankments decorated with pink spikes of fireweed and creamy clusters of meadowsweet, through a ravine, beside the river, over the bridge, along ancient pathways forged many generations ago when the railway seemed so much faster than the horse and cart. Until we arrive back in Welshpool and civilisation in the 21st century.
The original beautiful mainline Welshpool Station is now a most interesting shop and café. When the old Cambrian main line to Whitchurch via Oswestry closed to passengers in 1965, closely followed by most local stations towards Aberystwyth, two of the four platforms became unused. The plans for the A483 Welshpool bypass necessitated the relocation of the railway line so the station was closed and a replacement station platform located a little further south.
Published in the October edition of the Whitchurch Gossip
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