Back to the 1970s Part II: To Nant Gwernol!

Another seventies year, 1976 with relevant snippets from 1975, this being a mere four decades and a bit ago.
I had worked as seasonal Wharf booking clerk for two years until summer 1975, when I joined the permanent staff on Traffic work but mainly seconded during the winter to Engineering on the Extension, given our requirements to complete the construction. This was a brave move by the Railway as I would not have appointed myself to any engineering position, anywhere.
This balance of tasks continued until trains restarted in 1976 when I reverted to Traffic work full time, booking and rostering with lots of other bits thrown in, as “Mark the (chief) Clerk”, a joke title until I found out that the Fezzy really had a Chief Clerk, at which point I modestly dropped the Chief.
Working on the permanent staff was an experience.  When I was in the Shop in summer 1972 Tris England, then Commercial Manager, warned me that volunteers envied the job they thought the permanent staff did, but if they knew the job they did do, they would be horrified. Although the good times kept rolling in 1975/6, Tris was not completely wrong.
I was however very lucky to be on the Railway during the winter of 1975/6. The Extension was being completed.  The published memories of the period are, of course, of the Gwerns forging forward with the work assisted by the area Working Parties.
I was involved in another story of that time, which concerned the small group of permanent staff, sometimes no more than three, who were working at Abergynolwyn to complete the new longer platform and trackbed, and prepare the track beyond towards Nant Gwernol. The gang also kept things going generally throughout the winter weekdays between working parties. As the site was mostly unlit, the working day reduced until the 1975 winter solstice, and then expanded.
My modest engineering experience also expanded rapidly, through mixing concrete at Aber, principally involving getting material into the mixer rather than on the floor, to working a chainsaw, which I attempted, or was allowed to attempt, only once. I also mastered the basics of track laying, and became in Awdreian terms, a fairly useful engine.
Our little midweek gang fortunately lost few days that winter through inclemency. When it occasionally did rain, we decamped to Abergynolwyn booking office, where one of our number recounted his astonishing tales and experiences as a professional soldier, which I will not repeat here.
Volunteers turned up mostly at weekends that winter. One Area weekend working party had a Sunday departure time which was rigidly fixed. This meant on one occasion them leaving a quantity of rails half on the lineside stack and half on a Boflat.
 It is harder for a gang of three to shift rails than a gang of twenty. The suggestion of what  we should do with the rails, while anatomically impossible, would certainly have caused watered eyes in one part of the country if attempted.
One of my main tasks was bringing material up the line to site, including filling trains of hoppers from the Wharf ballast dock. This happened on at least one occasion in complete darkness with just me, a Bardic handlamp and the engine; thankfully it was No 5, Midlander, which did not slip. I moved the train up the ramp opening the chute over each hopper in turn, and then drove back to Pendre, similarly lightly illuminated and put the train to bed until the following morning.  It’s strange what you do when needs must.
Mornings meant driving trains up the line. Midlander, the usual Extension engine was my favourite, because as well as being sure footed you could tell, unlike Merseysider, which way it would go when you opened the throttle. It also had a cab, unlike Alf, so you did not freeze in the down direction on winter afternoons. One member of staff at least had to be thawed out in front of the Pendre stove when this happened.
These trains were a profound experience for me, as the valley seemed much wilder and emptier then than it does now.
I was often completely on my own on the train propelling the loads. I recall one day when Midlander was Not Well laying a plume of smoke going up Cynfal which nearly matched the last up CCE (Cambrian Coast Express, for those who never knew it) at Talerddig Cutting, and also discovering on another occasion at Tynllwyn top gate where the down grade going up starts, that the train was making more rapid progress towards Abergynolwyn than the locomotive.
Those who now come into the TR bubble during the operating season may not appreciate the atmosphere of living in Tywyn in the winter in 1975/6.
It was still possible to glimpse the traditional workings of the local community which Bill Trinder and others so ably exploited on our behalf in the early days of the Society. On the other hand, it was difficult to ignore the circumstances and employment prospects of young people who did not join the general exodus to England. This could be hard for them, occasionally extremely so.
The now derelict Corbett Arms was also an important part of life.  I worked there as an evening barman in the winter as several other TR staff did. The Vaults was the public bar, and on one occasion, ill feeling towards the Saesneg barman reached a pitch. There was however in the bar a TR contractor, one of our small gang at Abergynolwyn, whose stature in Tywyn was well known and respected. He tapped his glass on the bar, and said “anything which is said to Mark, is also said to me…”  Exit juvenile stout parties. You thus find out who your friends are. I also found out that Tywyn was maybe not the world’s leading all year resort. You came to understand, on leaving the Corbett possibly in the early hours, how you had to lean forward into the wind, with the salt spray from the gale hitting you right in the face. Anyone who survives Tywyn for more than one winter is, in my view, a hero.
April 1976 marked a return to traffic work full time and quitting the pub for the start of the operating season leading up to the opening of the Extension.
The junket on May 22, 1976 has been handsomely recorded elsewhere. I missed the opening ceremony as I was controller for the day at Wharf. It all ran to plan.
The evening celebration was quite something. I suggest you never help organise and run a bar, at Neuadd Pendre, or elsewhere, unless you have strong nerves, and a head which is not extensively affected by alcohol. I also needed a keen eye on the takings as I had financed much of the beer from my life savings.  Reg Boyce from the Corbett, who held the licence, was an interested observer. Although everyone had great fun, the evening entertainment was not without adverse remarks, flagging maybe a generation and attitude gap which existed within the Society at that time.
We did not run a full service to Nant Gwernol that last week in May following the opening in order to finish some outstanding work. Few grockles were discommoded as they did not know where the Railway went anyway, but there was one clerical gentleman from Ireland who had come specially to travel over the Extension, and was disappointed. Phone calls were made and he travelled to Abergynolwyn on a service train, and then had a conducted tour over the new works which pleased him much more than a trip on an ordinary train would have done.
We had many visitors that summer to see what we had achieved. On one occasion when I was at Abergynolwyn an elderly Welsh gentleman asked permission to look round the box. Quarry was on automatic, and the bell signal from the fireman of an up train left a bit to be desired. “He didn’t get that quite right,” said the gentleman. “And what did you do in the Service, sir?” I asked.
“Oh, I was stationmaster at Cardiff Central…..”
The re-opening had left bits of the existing line somewhat than less than well maintained, including the section immediately below Abergynolwyn loop from which HM Inspector of Railways must have averted his eyes during the inspection of the new works.
In order to rectify the situation, we resorted during the early summer of 1976 to run steam hauled ballast trains in between the published passenger service to do the essentials, the only occasion on which I recall this happening. This resulted in the highest speed I ever encountered on a TR train, on which I was guard. The train consisted of a down working with No 3, a long rake of empty ballast hoppers and, of all things, the Stanton van at the back. What do you do ? Wind the handbrake on to try to keep the coupling links tight or lie down on the floor ?
The task of urgent track work continued throughout the summer of 1976.  I did not participate in this, but I witnessed evening working parties of operating volunteers, who had, in some cases, already been working on the Railway for fifteen hours still there at 22:00 laying and ballasting track. The gangs were sometimes still there until the early hours of the following morning.
The section for relaying was lit by portable electric light strings, but on one evening the gang simply outran them, leaving the Chief Engineer standing, like Liberty, illuminating the last few spikes with an acetylene torch.
The reason for recounting this story, which remains with me more than any detail of the winter work, was that the Railway which could receive this service from its volunteers and permanent staff had very little to worry about.
On the traffic side, we had to recast the Timetable from May 1976 when the Extension opened. It goes without saying that our volunteer staff rose to the challenge of the change.
The 1976 Nant Gwernol three train service of nine round trips at fifty minute intervals, plus an early-ish one to Aber only, always seemed to me easier to work than the Abergynolwyn timetable in previous years. It may be that the crossings were more spaced out, allowing recovery time, or that we had by this stage completely mastered three train working, and were therefore used to the pressure.
In terms of passenger journeys, we had anticipated a split of bookings between Wharf and the main stations up the line, and possibly difficulties with the volume of originating bookings at Aber given the reduced departure frequency. Since we did not hit the 1973 traffic peak, this latter concern was unrealised though things were on several occasions extremely tight.
Because the greatest distance travelled per passenger was preferable for our finances, the possibility of passengers booking shorter journeys from Wharf was a problem.  I therefore offered a pint of beer to the Wharf booking clerk who made the lowest proportion of non Nant Gwernol  return bookings in a day.
The pint was won by a then newish Wharf booking clerk, who went on to become, I believe,  a driver and controller, who simply refused to admit to any passenger that any station up the line existed except for Nant Gwernol. This was a pint well bought.
The fare table had also been slightly skewed to act against short distance trips to the extent that the Dolgoch booking clerk told me late one afternoon that a family party had been upset at the return fare they had been required to pay from Dolgoch to Nant Gwernol.
The upshot of this was, of course, inevitable. Later that week I went for dinner with some friends from Birmingham who were staying at Vaynol. “We travelled on your railway this week,” they said, “and we didn’t believe the fare we had to pay from Dolgoch to Nant Gwernol…..”
As context to the 1976 operation it should be mentioned that traffic rostering continued to be turbulent, because of an excess of volunteers at that time rather than any shortage.
In one previous year we had somewhat overbooked traffic staff for the peak, causing resentment. The established mechanisms through T&OC for defusing such a situation failed to work, and feelings continued to fester until one junior volunteer had the perception and sense to let those responsible know what was happening. This allowed us to take some remedial action.
In consequence for 1976 when I had a role in both volunteer bookings and rostering, we took a much more hard headed view of the number of traffic volunteers we really needed to provide the peak service and to give those who booked a reasonable spread of duties. We booked up to a point, and no further, even if this meant telling volunteers that traffic work was not available.
Despite this restriction of numbers, 1976 marked a new high point in traffic volunteer operation in three train up to that date, fortunately coinciding with the Nant Gwernol opening. We saw the fruits of the programme of blockpost training which had been running for several years, including the establishment of a separate grade. This cut the burden on suitably qualified guards and seasonal staff to keep the crossings working.  We also realised the benefits of the introduction of the large FR style blue train books for ticketing. These replaced the TR station books which had become an increasing nightmare for weekly booking up as traffic boomed. This change allowed more senior volunteers to book at Wharf, and also to do the full weekly reconciliation.
These advances marked a further small step on the long road to full volunteer operation of the peak service.
The crowning glory of this wealth of skill for me was to be able to spend a peak week on holiday with my parents in Devon; and to lecture the incredulous staff at Portmadoc how easy it was to do this if you had a railway run by sufficient competent and trained volunteers.
As the season progressed, diesel driving continued to be an asset, as I could bring the weekend ECS down to Wharf early enough to attract the grockles when the steamy puff had failed to boil. This habit of mine continued to ruffle the feathers of the more departmentally minded members of the Locomotive Department, and was probably worth doing just for this reason. It is good to see how many of our volunteers have become multi skilled in recent years across all operating areas of the Railway.
It was also extremely hot that summer. We were plagued by outbreaks of fire from cinders which simply re-ignited shortly after they were put out as the underbrush was tinder dry.
The conditions were particularly hard for locomotive crews who had to fire and drive the steamy puffs in the heat. On one occasion I walked round Tywyn at midnight watching the grass fires raging on the neighbouring mountains.
At the end of the 1976 summer season I left the employment of the railway to pursue a career in Birmingham, and do other things.
So in 1976 we made it, once again; Tywyn to Nant Gwernol. We completed the engineering work with minimal impact on the passenger service. We changed our operating practices and timetable significantly, but nevertheless carried all the passengers despite reduced train frequency. This was achieved although traffic was almost at the level of the 1973 peak. 
On now to the Lake?
Your choice.

Mark Winstanley.