RDS North Wales position on reopening the Welsh Highland Railway
Members of the RDS North Wales committee have discussed what RDSs policy should be on the Welsh Highland Railway, which is turning out to be highly contentious. The plan is to rebuild 25 miles of narrow gauge railway, mostly through the Snowdonia National Park, to link Caernarfon with Porthmadog, where a physical connection with the Ffestiniog Railway would allow through trains from Caernarfon to Blaenau Ffestiniog. The Ffestiniog Railway, which is in charge of the Welsh Highland scheme, believes the new line would cut car traffic in the National Park with frequent services to important tourist/walking locations eg. Beddgelert and Rhyd Ddu, at the foot of Snowdon.
However, the scheme has encountered strong opposition which at times has bordered on the hysterical, with claims that the railway would destroy a beautiful area of countryside. One of the more valid concerns, perhaps, is that the railway would attract a large number of cars because Caernarfon, the end of the line most accessible from the major conurbations of North West England, does not have a mainline rail service (or a bus-rail link service).
Reopening the Bangor to Caernarfon line has been a long-running campaigning issue for RDS North Wales. It is ironic that nothing has been done about this scheme, which would boost the tourism in Caernarfon and help local people to travel about, but funding has been put in place for the Welsh Highland Railway, which will cost roughly the same to rebuild but will be of little use to local people as a mode of transport.
Our conclusion was that we should support the Welsh Highland Railway scheme but in the context of it being part of a wider rail-development plan for Snowdonia which would include rebuilding Bangor-Caernarfon. A frequent service from Chester, and further east, direct to Caernarfon would reduce the number of people travelling by car to the steam railway and to northern Snowdonia. In this context the WHR, like the Ffestiniog, would be a link between two parts of the mainline rail system and could be useful as a through route between Mid and North Wales.
With the Bangor-Caernarfon line in place, an additional peak-season service could run perhaps every two hours from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Caernarfon, via Betws-y-Coed, Conwy and other tourist venues. This service would connect with narrow-gauge trains which close the loop from Caernarfon to Blaenau Ffestioniog. Round Robin tickets would allow tourists to make the circuit, breaking as they wished. They would be able to penetrate the area inside this circle of railways by means of the frequent bus services that are already being planned by the Snowdonia National Park. With Bangor-Caernarfon and the WHR in place - two very modest investments by comparison with some of the road schemes being promoted locally - northern Snowdonia should suddenly start to compare with Switzerland.
RDS North Wales February 1998