Statement of Significance: 

An 0.6 metre (2') gauge railway, the oldest independent railway company in the world, authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1832. The railway was built as a gravity and horse-drawn line, to transport slate from the quarries in the mountains around Blaenau Ffestiniog to the harbour at Portmadoc (now Porthmadog), and was adapted for steam traction and passenger carriage in the 1860s-1870s. Due to the decline in the slate industry, the railway closed to all traffic in 1946, but pioneering railway enthusiasts took over in the early 1950s and it was re-opened in stages as a tourist railway, finally reaching Blaenau Ffestiniog in 1982. The Festiniog Railway took forward the engineering tradition of the sinuous narrow gauge contour formation railway of the Penrhyn Quarry Railroad (1.3) into the age of steam traction and passenger carriage. Trials carried out on the railway in 1870 were instrumental in the development of low-cost narrow gauge systems as an option for railways in colonies forming part of European empires and in the American continent, as well as for lightly-laid industrial systems and for military railways. As such, the Festiniog Railway represents an important transfer of Welsh technology associated with the slate industry, across the world. Within the Nominated Property, its influence may be traced on the Talyllyn Railway (NPRN 34946). 

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The railway currently runs between Blaenau Ffestiniog Central Station and Porthmadog Harbour Station. Its route has changed in various places over the years. As originally opened, it ran both from Rhiwbyfdir (SH 6965 4682; the Dinas branch) and from Duffws (variant spellings; SH 7025 4592), the two branches uniting at Glan y Pwll (SH 6932 4605), to a lower terminus at Porthmadog harbour at SH 5687 3834. Realignments of the route began with the construction of the old Moelwyn tunnel in 1839-1842 (SH 67839 43342), making redundant the Moelwyn incline system, the cutting of Garnedd tunnel in 1851 (SH 6582 4133), rebuilding of a now-destroyed part of the line at Tan y Grisiau in 1855, and the building of a new route between Dduallt to Tan y Grisiau from 1965 to 1978 in order to restore the link between these two stations following the drowning of part of the route as part of the pumped storage scheme.

Slate and other goods have been transferred to and from the railway at many locations. Only principal sidings and marshalling yards are noticed here; these include Duffws Station, Blaenau Ffestiniog Central Station, Blaenau Ffestiniog Station: London and North Western Railway, Rhiwbryfdir, Minffordd yard and Porthmadog harbour.

Pre-locomotive passing-loops and stables are recorded at Rhiwbryfdir (SH 6965 4682), (old Moelwyn) Tunnel South (SH 6795 4280), Tafarn Trip (SH 6567 4133), Hafod y Llyn (SH 6462 4107), Rhiw Goch (SH 6263 4049), Cae Ednyfed (SH 60016 38538), and at Boston Lodge works (SH 58475 37870).

Public passenger stations have functioned at Duffws, Blaenau Ffestiniog Central, Blaenau Ffestiniog Exchange, Dinas, Tan y Grisiau, Dduallt, Tan y Bwlch, Hafod y Llyn, Plas Halt, Penrhyndeudraeth, Minffordd, Boston Lodge Halt and Porthmadog, as well as informal stopping points elsewhere.

The Festiniog Railway’s principal engineering works are located at Boston Lodge (SH 58475 37870). 

This site is part of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales World Heritage Site, Component Part 5: Ffestiniog: its slate mines and quarries, slate town and railway to Porthmadog Inscribed July 2020.    

  Sources:  

• Louise Barker & Dr David Gwyn, March 2017. Gwynedd Slate Industry Transport Routes. (Unpublished Report: Project GC401 for Gwynedd Archaeological Trust)   

• Tirwedd Llechi Gogledd Orllewin Cymru / The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales. Nomination as a World heritage Site (Nomination Document, January 2020)   

• Wales Slate World Heritage Site https://www.llechi.cymru/    

Hannah Genders Boyd, RCAHMW, March 2022