irish mail left
The Quarry Hunslet Web Site

Celebrating these unique steam locomotives
irish mail

f

1971, Reprinted 2000
by James I C Boyd
ISBN 0853613656
Book Size 225mm x 145mm, casebound, gold blocked spine, printed end papers and two-colour glossy jacket. 320 Pages 100 B&W Photographs
Publisher: Oakwood Press
Series: British Narrow Gauge Railway
In 1971 the First Edition of this title drew readers` attention from James Boyd`s previous book about the Mid-Wales Narrow Gauge Railways, to a treasury of long-abandoned railways in South Caernarvonshire which, until the 1960s, had been hardly investigated. In this Second Edition (in two volumes) the author builds still further on his life-long and close knowledge of the subject. He recounts the politics and infighting of the Cambrian, Great Western and London & North Western Railways to secure a greater foothold and share in the then-lucrative North Wales slate industry traffic, and wrench more of it from the monopoly of an entrenched Festiniog Railway. Within this theatre of narrow railway plotting, Hugh Beaver Roberts aspired to dominate the scene for over a decade; then Charles Easton Spooner, finding the Festiniog Railway too restrictive for his empirical ambitions, contrived his own ascendency; finally Henry Joseph Jack cunningly manipulated to dictate electrical and transport undertakings in this part of the county. Mr Boyd deals with the complexities of competitive promotions which baffled the Board of Trade, and holds our attention with amusing extracts from the documentation of those times until the formation of the Welsh Highland Railway . . . . the subject of the second volume.

Contents:

  • The Embankment Tramway
  • Gorseddau Tramway
  • Festiniog & Blaenau Railway
  • Merionethshire Railway
  • Croesor Tramway
  • Bettws-y-Coed & Festiniog Railway
  • North Wales Narrow Gauge Railway
  • Portmadoc Beddgelert & South Snowdon Railway
 

 

Photographs copyright remains with the person who took them, you should contact them if you wish to use their pictures. If no contact address is given on the page, please contact the webmaster in the first instance.
2007 - 2009 © Mark Adlington. All rights reserved.