Narrow Gauge Railways in South Caernarvonshire - Volume 1
1988 Revised & Enlarged Edition (2000 Reprint)
This volume includes the Embankment Tramway, Gorseddau Tramway, Festiniog & Blaenau Railway, Merionethshire Railway, Croesor Tramway, Bettws-y-Coed & Festiniog Railway, North Wales Narrow Gauge Railway and the Portmadoc, Beddgelert & South Snowdon 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 new Second Edition (enlarged, and in two volumes) the author builds still further on his life-long and close knowledge of the subject. He recounts the politics and in-fighting 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.
Hardback with dust jacket, 384 pages, black & white photographs. Map in endpapers
Condition: Good/Very Good
ISBN: 9780853613657
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