European Railroad Discussion > LLandudno, Wales day-trips to Holyhead and Blaenau Ffestiniog

We took two separate day trips to cover more rail mileage in Wales.
1. After visiting Conwy castle, we boarded a train for Holyhead, the ferry terminal for connections to Ireland. This shows the train arriving through the castle wall.
2. This is the tower (signalbox) at Bangor. There are still plenty of staffed signalboxes in the UK, each named for the adjacent station or junction.
3. This station has the longest name in the world, though it is sometimes abbreviated as Llanfair PG. 

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4. Car storage at Holyhead, with a ferry in the distance.  Ferries take about 3-1/4 hours and run throughout the day/night
5. The next day we rode the standard gauge train from Llandudno to Ffestiniog. Note the heritage London Midland & Scottish abbreviation in the metalwork at Llandudno station
6. The shuttle train arrives at Llandudno; we will ride this train to Blaenau Ffestiniog on the Conwy Valley route.  Note the semaphores in the background.
The platform at Blaenau Ffestiniog is adjacent to the one used by the narrow gauge Ffestiniog Railway that we rode the previous week.

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The Conwy Valley Line passes the Conwy Valley Railway/Museum in Beyws-y-Coed.
7. There are two gauges of narrow gauge lines at Btws-y-Coed; the track closest to the fence, with the overhead line, was not in use.  The older standard gauge cars appear to be used for storage.
8. A mini train at Betws-y-Coed.
9. Wales, and the UK in general, still has many magazines and broadsheet newspapers available in stores, convenience markets and in newsstands.  The stores in major rail stations had plenty of railfan magazines.
What I was amazed to find was that a store in Llandudno, a branch line end point, had this large selection of magazines devoted to current operations, historic preservation, models, and so forth.
I already posted this pic in the recent 4-page-plus TO thread about Trains/Firecrown Media, and I'll show it here: I'm holding up a copy of Trains in front of all of the UK magazines. I already had that copy of Trains back at home; I ended up buying Tramways & Urban Transit (which included an article about Cardiff's Tram-Trains, Maryland's Purple Line, and other current subjects). 

Thanks for looking



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/26 16:59 by casco17.

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casco17 Wrote:
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> We took two separate day trips to cover more rail
> mileage in Wales.
> 1. After visiting Conwy castle, we boarded a train
> for Holyhead, the ferry terminal for connections
> to Ireland. This shows the train arriving through
> the castle wall.
> 2. This is the tower (signalbox) at Bangor. There
> are still plenty of staffed signalboxes in the UK,
> each named for the adjacent station or junction.
> 3. This station has the longest name in the world,
> though it is sometimes abbreviated as Llanfair
> PG. 
>
> Continued

Saw this in June, try pronouncing this town's name. It is a "mouthful". For the translation from Welsh to English look at the sign on market in this photo.

KC 

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