The weather was really good and I decided to go up to Wales a day early to make the best of it. Unfortunately I could not extend my stay at the hotel. Nil desperandum. I decided to put my tent into the car and to find somewhere to camp....... I chose Abergonolwyn so that I could have a look at the Tallylyn Narrow Guage Railway.

The history of the Talyllyn Railway is inextricably tied up with the history of Bryneglwys slate quarry. All but invisible from the main valley road and from the present-day terminus of the Talyllyn Railway at Nant Gwernol, the quarry once employed 300 men and in its time produced 300,000 tons of slate and slabs. Bryneglwys lies on the same veins of slate as the quarries further east around Corris and Aberllefenni. Slate was first quarried at Bryneglwys in the 1840s, by John Pughe of Aberdyfi, the end product being carried to Aberdyfi by pack animals or on carts or sledges for onward shipment by sea.

In 1863 a group of Manchester cotton mill owners, concerned about a shortage of cotton supplies owing to the American civil war, sought to diversify into slate mining.  They acquired the leases on the quarry at Bryn Eglwys and set out to expand it.  They invested in the region of £160,000 in developing the quarry, building houses for quarrymen in the village of Abergynolwyn and building a railway from the quarry to Tywyn, where it would connect with the newly opened line along the coast and heading east to connect with the national railway network.

In 1951, the then owners, the Hayden Jones family, handed over ownership to the Tallylyn Railway Preservation Society.

Courtesy of www.talyllyn.co.uk