The
Moel-y-Faen Tramway. On
15th October 2013, members Mike Hodgson and Richard Lewis made a
trip to Llangollen to walk the Moel-y-Faen Tramway. The day started
with a drive from their homes in Sheffield to Llangollen, and then
to the top of the Horseshoe Pass (Bwlch-yr-Oernant) to have coffee
at the Ponderosa Cafe before the walk. The following is Mike's report.
This line appears
in the recent Oakwood Press title, Industrial Tramways of he
Vale of Llangollen. In outline, the tramway was a slate-carrying
line. Slate quarrying, especially of slab, started around the beginning
of the 18th century, reaching a peak in about 1871, and is now confined
to one quarry, Clogau (at grid reference SJ 185464). A plaque in
the lobby of the Ponderosa Café provides the following outline
of the story:
'The quarries
are first mentioned in a lease of 1802 between the owner, Sir
Watkin Williams Wynn, and Messrs. Pulford & Houghland. They
subsequently passed through the hands of several people and companies:
- 1807:
Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, and Messrs. Farr & Pickering.
- 1821:
John Coward.
- 1840s:
Alexander Reid, owner and partner of the Llangollen Flagstone
Company with John Taylor & Sons.
- 1869:
Pentrefelin House, the focus of the Llangollen Flagstone Company,
was occupied by Captain Paull and the Llangollen Slab &
Slate Company.
'Decline
of the Slate Industry. The heyday of slate production came in
the latter half of the 19th century. Increased demand for slate
was created by the growth of towns: with the introduction oif
new building materials in the 19th century, demand for slate fell.
From the 1950s, slate production had all but ceased in the Llangollen
area. The Clogau Quarry, although going through periods of inaction,
was still working on a small scale in 1984.'
Firstly to
settle a name, I have always known this line as the Moel-y-Faen
Tramway, as it starts at a quarry of the same name (SJ 186478) on
the slopes of this mountain, and this name was used when I got to
know the line in about 1960. The Oakwood book calls it 'Maesyrichen',
a small hamlet below the big incline, while Denbighshire County
Council calls it Llantysilio in an informative brochure produced
quite recently – I'm not sure why.
The line crosses
the A542, and is under the Ponderosa Cafe, appearing on the other
side of the car park, and curving west to eventually re-cross this
road. We walked this part and retraced our steps. Going back down
the Horseshoe, and now going east and south, we parked and climbed
steeply to reach the line. Now we made our way back up the trackbed
to the the foot of the short incline from Clogau (Berwyn on the
leaflet), and retraced our steps all the way to the top of, and
then halfway down, the magnificent big incline. The bottom half
is very steep, overgrown, and virtually impassable, so we followed
a footpath leading back north-west to the road at the Britannia
Inn. Apart from a field at the bottom of the big incline, and the
embankment in the grounds of a private house as the line nears Pentre
Felin, all the trackbed is accessible. At the canal, the lifting
bridge, and the gantry over the canal have gone, but the mill is
there (now the Motor Museum). Mike
Hodgson. |