[otd] 14th May 1951 - First Preserved Train run - start of preservation movement

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From Tayllyn History

Following Sir Haydn’s death in 1950, a group of enthusiasts, led by the engineer and author Tom Rolt, called a public meeting in Birmingham and the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society was formed.  Meetings were held with Lady Haydn, Sir Haydn’s widow, who agreed to hand over the railway to the TRPS.  The agreement included that the Haydn Jones family would continue to appoint some of the directors to the TR company board and that in the event of the scheme failing the family would get the first £1350, and in February 1951 the TRPS took over the railway.  The quarry and the property in the village remained the property of Lady Haydn.

The idea behind the TRPS was that members would provide both money, through membership fees and donations, and labour by working on the railway.  On 14th May 1951 the TRPS ran its first public service with 5 return trips to Rhydyronen.  The service to Abergynolwyn started on 4th June with two trains daily on Monday to Friday.

[Mark A]

A railway that crops up in several family anecdotes and old photo albums.

It seems to have been in pre WW1 days perhaps, great aunt Maisie, in her twenties, on a Sunday when the line was shut, would recruit local youth ('They had to be good and strong') to take a slate truck up the line, climb aboard, and then descend under gravity as she told me. Photos of these Sunday adventures of Maisie's do not seem to exist.

Fast forward a generation, and two undated photos from different times of family groups, the first has a hellfire dog and in this case the slate truck is alongside the platform at Tywyn Pendre station. So, at least a couple of gravity runs from the twenties or thirties.

Then, a later photo, from Lover's Lane bridge just outside Tywyn, of a train from early preservation days, grass grown track and the railway boundary hedge not quite run wild. Google Streetview doesn't capture this well, and in any case the boundary hedge is now thirty feet high.

Mark