History of the LVR&HCo
Introduction
This guide to the Llyfni Vale Railway & Harbour Company is the story of a railway and a harbour that never was, or so the history books tell us. At a time when the Nantlle slate quarries were struggling to compete with those at Penrhyn, with its new tramway built by Richard Pennant, and after years of procrastination, the threat of another direct link from the Llanberis quarries to the Menia Strait at Dinorwic finally brought action. A tramway from Tal y Sarn to Caernarfon via Pen y Groes was built. The ensuing difficulties of this enterprise have been well documented elsewhere, what is less well known was the proposal for a rail link between Tal y Sarn and a new harbour built at Pont Llyfni which would have pre-empted the ill fated Nantlle Tramway. What would have happened if the plan had been adopted?
The account that follows is based on an assumption that the line from Tal y Sarn to Pont Llyfni was built and tells the ‘history ‘ of how it developed from a horse drawn slate tramway to its peak at the turn of the 18th century. The remainder of its tale remains to be told as at present the calendar on the booking office wall says 1903 as the staff prepare for another busy day on the line. The story of the LVR&HCo and its characters is fiction, but it is interwoven with a lot of actual history and real people of its time. I make no apology for any manipulation of the facts to make them fit the fiction, this is, first and foremost, the story of the The Llyfni Vale Railway & Harbour Company.
It should be noted that whilst the overarching company is the Lyfni Vale Railway & Harbour Company (LVR&HCo) the railway has its own management and staff and for convenience, and the prestige of its management, it is locally referred to as a separate entity, the Lyfni Vale Railway (LVR)
It may be noticed that Welsh names used in the text are real places, though the spelling is not always as one might expect. Over the years there have often been many different ways of spelling a places name, often at the same period in time, due partly to Welsh having been a spoken rather than written language and also the influx of the English who had trouble with the language anyway. In order to try and avoid some of the confusions I have tried to use spelling found in documents of the period and then use the same spelling for each place throughout, though I can not say if they are the correct spellings!
The account that follows is based on an assumption that the line from Tal y Sarn to Pont Llyfni was built and tells the ‘history ‘ of how it developed from a horse drawn slate tramway to its peak at the turn of the 18th century. The remainder of its tale remains to be told as at present the calendar on the booking office wall says 1903 as the staff prepare for another busy day on the line. The story of the LVR&HCo and its characters is fiction, but it is interwoven with a lot of actual history and real people of its time. I make no apology for any manipulation of the facts to make them fit the fiction, this is, first and foremost, the story of the The Llyfni Vale Railway & Harbour Company.
It should be noted that whilst the overarching company is the Lyfni Vale Railway & Harbour Company (LVR&HCo) the railway has its own management and staff and for convenience, and the prestige of its management, it is locally referred to as a separate entity, the Lyfni Vale Railway (LVR)
It may be noticed that Welsh names used in the text are real places, though the spelling is not always as one might expect. Over the years there have often been many different ways of spelling a places name, often at the same period in time, due partly to Welsh having been a spoken rather than written language and also the influx of the English who had trouble with the language anyway. In order to try and avoid some of the confusions I have tried to use spelling found in documents of the period and then use the same spelling for each place throughout, though I can not say if they are the correct spellings!