The World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys (2019) s01e04 Episode Script
Wales
1
Take a seat on the Cambrian line,
and be whisked away
on an unforgettable voyage
to a lost world.
We'll take you back in time
to the land of majestic castles
When you see it in front of you,
you realise its greatness.
and ingenious
Victorian engineering.
Many a story has been told
on here, on this viaduct.
We'll spend a fabulously
old-fashioned day at the seaside
Love the beach.
And now I've got over
the fear of them,
I'm really loving
the jellyfish as well.
drop in at an astonishing
make-believe Mediterranean village
on the beautiful coast of Wales
It's a little pocket of madness,
I guess you'd call it.
And welcome the return
of these stunning birds of prey
to their ancient homelands.
We'll meet the people who live
and work along this special railway.
I think in Welsh,
I do everything in Welsh,
I dream in Welsh - everything.
This is no ordinary
railway journey -
this is one of the most scenic
railway journeys in the world.
North Wales.
This modest railway station
might seem an unlikely start
to our train journey,
but this little town in North Wales
is the gateway to
a spectacularly scenic railway line
that can compete with
anywhere in the world.
The Cambrian Line begins
in the coastal town of Pwllheli
and runs 71 miles
to the English border.
It travels past
ancient castles,
Wales' highest
mountain,
and miles of gorgeous
golden beaches
from Barmouth
to Aberdovey.
The train turns inland
to historic Machynlleth,
and then passes through Caersws,
a shrine to Welsh poetry,
before our final
destination, Shrewsbury.
This run is one of
the most beautiful lines
that you will ever be on.
I mean, it is stunning.
It hits the coast,
it goes through the hills,
it is magnificent.
Archaeologist Graham can often
be found excavating Roman remains.
But the other love of his life
is the history of his native Wales.
This line starts
in the early 19th century.
There are a lot of small
railways throughout North Wales
which amalgamate to become
the Cambrian Railway,
and these lines were primarily
for exporting slate,
getting slate from
the quarries to the coast,
to be exported into England
and to other parts of the world.
Welsh slate was highly valued
as far back as Roman times.
But it was the Victorian
house-building boom
that inspired the Welsh
to move the slate by rail
to cope with the demand.
TANNOY: 'We will shortly
be arriving at Criccieih.
'Thank you.'
We've only travelled
eight miles down the line,
but it's worth getting off
at the seaside town of Criccieth
to see this awe-inspiring
medieval castle.
It's been inspiring
artists for years,
even the great JMW Turner.
Sitting atop a dramatic
rocky headland,
it played an important part
in Wales' constant struggle for
independence from the English.
It's an iconic symbol of Welshness.
This castle, initially
built by the Welsh,
later conquered by the English,
becomes a sign of oppression -
as do many of the other castles
in North Wales -
this ring of steel
that was set up by Edward I
to compress the Welsh into their
mountains and not let them out.
Even though it's later taken by
the English, it's a Welsh castle,
and it'll always be a Welsh castle.
The Cambrian Line wends its way
along this sparkling coast.
Having spent 20 years
working on its maintenance,
every inch of the route
is familiar to Trevor.
Although I'm a retired railwayman,
I've travelled the railways
throughout Europe
and nobody can argue with me
that this is probably the best
railway line, certainly in Europe.
The scenery changes
near enough on a monthly basis.
Next stop is the town
of Porthmadog
or was that "Porthma-DOG"
DOG BARKS
a town that seems to have
a large population
of train-loving canines.
Thanks to the myriad of rail lines
built to transport slate from
the quarries down to the port,
this isn't the only station
in Porthmadog.
Across town, there's
a blast from the past,
a station just for steam trains.
These narrow-gauge routes
are run by a whole army
of steam enthusiasts.
Steve is the fireman today
in charge of getting
this engine ready to go.
Oh, I love the teamwork, the people.
It's a group of people coming
together from all walks of life,
working together
in a passion that they love.
All the hard graft
is done at Boston Lodge,
the oldest such engineering works
in the world.
These mighty,
time-honoured locomotives
can burn up to
a ton of coal an hour,
depending on speed
and the gradient of the track.
They take around two hours to light
from cold to operating pressure.
When I was a kid,
I just dreamt of going
on the footplate, once,
of a steam engine,
and here I am doing this
and, every time I come,
I get a huge thrill.
There's nothing to beat it.
Richard's day job is in
a hospital burns unit in Stockport.
But today he's a volunteer
in charge of the fire box.
In the real world,
driver Paul is a retired
college lecturer.
He's been escaping here
for almost 50 years.
I don't do this all the time,
I do this, erm
two or three days a month,
something like that.
When I can escape
from my wife and do it.
And what does your wife say?
You'll have to cut that bit out!
THEY LAUGH
If you like,
this is my mistress, this is.
At least she knows where I am
when I'm doing this.
At the Harbour station,
passengers can buy a ticket
to ride the Ffestiniog Line
to Blaenau
or the Welsh Highland Railway
up to Carnarvon.
On this glorious trip back in time,
you can enjoy a taste
of old-fashioned,
first-class Welsh service.
A still cold water.
Still water. And Welsh rarebit.
Welsh Rarebit.
As it comes, sir, or with onions?
At the village of Rhyd Ddu,
it's time to change trains.
You can't come all this way
and not take a trip up
Wales' highest mountain, Snowdon.
Next, our Cambrian Railway adventure
transports us to a magical
Mediterranean wonderland
built on the coast of Wales.
We're back on
the glorious Cambrian Line.
A voyage that takes us through
the stunning scenery of North Wales
between the sea and the mountains.
A short hop from Minffordd station,
we step into
a totally different world.
This is Portmeirion,
a fairy-tale village
created a century ago
by the eccentric architect
Clough Williams-Ellis.
Location manager Meurig
is passionate about the place.
I find ii incredibly
inspiring here
because, you know, one man
had this vision and he did it.
You know, he'd waited 20 years
to find the right site to do this
and he bought it for £5,000,
a loan from the Midland Bank,
and I don't think any bank
would ever give a loan
to buy and build
something like this again
but, at that time, they did,
and he then spent
50 years building it.
Clough Williams-Ellis had
a playful approach to architecture
and loved to mix
the new with the old.
He rescued buildings
from demolition,
like this Georgian bath house
from war-damaged Bristol,
which he transported to Portmeirion
stone by stone.
The beauty of this
was the proximity to the rail line -
all these people were coming here,
before cars were common
and easier to get hold of,
people come by train.
It's a little pocket of madness,
I guess you'd call it.
But all the mad details
need constant maintenance.
Hi, Nige. Hi, Meurig.
How's it going?
OK, thank you. Well done.
Nigel Simmons has been
the resident artist at Portmeirion
since 1984.
This wall is new.
So, from over there,
you can see a big blank wall,
if I hadn't painted it.
So now I'm just trying
to camouflage it
and make it look like
the rest of the foliage.
What I like about coming here
and doing things,
is that they're all different.
Like these top windows
of the terrace of housing there,
they're not windows,
they're just painted on.
The bottom ones are,
but the top ones are false windows.
And Nigel has become infamous
for pushing back his deadlines.
You'll be finishing soon the night?
Uh I don't know what time it is.
It's nearly midday.
Oh, another half an hour
and I'll jack it in.
When I first started here,
I started 9-5.
And I just
Bits I did
When I came back the next day,
the bits I did between 3pm and 5pm
were not very good,
so I had to redo it.
So, what I did then, was jack it in
at three o'clock in the afternoon,
but then I found all I did in
the afternoon wasn't very good.
So now I jack it in at lunchtime.
You keep threatening to retire,
don't you, Nigel? Oh, yes.
That's right.
I've been threatening to retire
since a long time.
But they won't let me.
Well, no. That's because,
as I keep telling Nige,
it's like the Hotel California,
isn't it?
You know, you can
check out any time you like,
but you can never leave.
Never leave, yes.
Unlike Nigel, we have
no problem leaving,
and we're soon safely
back on the train,
heading for Harlech
with retired railwayman Trevor
and his fond memories
of childhood journeys.
It frightens me when I think
how long I've been
travelling on the train.
But you never get bored of it.
Having the schoolchildren,
I think that brings you
back down to earth sometimes.
We all think we all know everything,
and then you get the youngsters
that'll tell you things
you never even thought of.
We're coming into Harlech now,
1957 the school was built
and I attended the school there.
I travelled every day
back and forward,
so that was a 21-22 mile
journey every day.
The railway line passes
directly underneath
the splendid Harlech Castle.
The castle sits on the Harlech Dome,
this great geological
formation in front of us,
which sits on the end
of the Rhinogydd mountains.
It's said that this is one of the
oldest rock formations in the world.
When the castle was built
in the 13th century,
the sea lapped at its foot.
But since then,
the water has retreated.
Harlech Castle is a wonderful castle
built by a Frenchman
working for Edward I.
This great bastion of power
dominates the landscape,
with views in every direction.
The castle is then snatched
from the English
by the Welsh rebel leader
Owain Glyndwr.
Harlech Castle, once a symbol
of power for Edward,
becomes a symbol of Welsh identity.
And to imagine the bastions
in the towers behind us
having Welsh banners and Welsh flags
and ensigns flying all around,
it must have formed an incredible
symbol for Welshness
and for the Welsh people
to rally around.
It's time for a pint at the pub
by the railway line
at the foot of this great fortress
which held out for seven years
in a spectacular siege.
It ended in 1468,
and it's a very proud moment
in Welsh history.
Lloniannau.
This siege was so epic,
it's filled the hearts
of every Welshman.
The captain of the castle
was a Welshman,
it's got a Welsh garrison,
and so this siege became
immortalised in Welsh song.
SONG: Men of Harlech
# Harlech cyfod dy faneri
# Gwel y celyn enyn yn I
# Meion wyr oll I wnaedd I
# Cmru f0 am byth
# Aed y waedd ac aed y weddi
# I bob cwr o'n gwlad uchelfri
# Nes adsinia yr eiryri
# Cymru f0 am byth
# Arwyr, sawdwyr sydyn
1% RhuKh rwyn at y sewn
# Gyrwn ef I ffoi o nant
# A bryn a phant a Dyffryn
# Chwifiwn faner goruchafiaeth
# Gorfoleddwn yn ei al aeth
# Clywir llef ein buddugol iaeth
1% Cymru f0 am byKh. 1%
APPLAUSE
The train hugs the stunning
coastline for the next 12 miles.
In Cardigan Bay you may even
see seals and dolphins,
until you arrive in Barmouth,
a place where the sea
meets the mountains
and the Victorian engineers
had a mighty problem to solve -
how to build a lifeline
linking the communities
on each side of the estuary.
This is the famous Barmouth Viaduct.
It's now 152 years old.
My late father, he worked
on the viaduct before me,
I did spend 20 years
on this viaduct,
in all sorts of weathers,
and believe me, on a late Saturday
night, early Sunday morning,
when there's an east wind
coming down the river,
doesn't matter how well
you're wrapped up,
it's like a knife, the wind can be.
Originally there were shelters
so locals could take advantage
of the charms of the estuary
whatever the weather.
When we used to have
the shelters as kids,
we played on here,
the fishing from here,
start your early courting
as youngsters,
you'd come on the viaduct
with those shelters here.
Many a story has been told on here,
on this viaduct.
All right, come and see my baby.
This is the
This is what it's all about.
The viaduct has a swing bridge
which used to open to allow
large boats to pass through,
and Trevor was one of the railwaymen
tasked with its operation.
We would take out
four little lengths of rail,
one on each end here,
and the same on the opposite side.
We would get a key from
the signal box in Barmouth
which protected the railway line
so there's no trains come,
and we'd put the key in here,
unlocked it,
and we could pull
the two levers forward,
cos the levers pull the boats out
to allow the viaduct to turn.
And this is where
you'd have your handles,
three or four men - one here,
one there on the other side -
and that's how the whole viaduct
or the whole span
turned round, that way.
Opening it was straightforward,
but closing it could
sometimes take a lot longer.
Problem being,
in the middle of the summer,
once you'd opened it, the heat
built up, the metal expanded,
and you could never
close it immediately.
If it was a very hot day,
you may be there several hours,
and there'd be a welder
perhaps just chapping off
a little bit here and there
so he could get the bridge closed.
I can remember, as a youngster,
we only used to have
the one train on a Sunday,
it would come in first thing
in the morning,
and same in Barmouth,
so the bridge could be opened,
and the train would come back out
at six o'clock at night.
If it had been a very hot day,
the train never
come back out of Barmouth,
cos you couldn't
close the bridge again.
It's not a problem these days,
as the bridge hasn't been open
for more than 20 years.
The views as you cross the river
are truly breath-taking.
But it seems you can have
too much of a good thing,
according to these two
retired train drivers.
I used to work on it for years,
I used to enjoy it,
it's especially all right
in the summer,
bit rough in the winter.
Just going once and back is nice,
have a nice day.
But, you know
when we had to do it twice,
it was a bit, like
It were a bit boring
and monotonous, weren't it?
You know, you're stopping
in all these 27 stops.
Here the train squeezes
between the sand dunes,
and even a golf course,
until it reaches the ever-popular
seaside resort Aberdovey,
with it's fantastic,
unspoiled sandy beach
stretching for miles.
There's nine of us. There's my mum.
When my children were young,
Mum and I used to
bring them every year.
We used to come and stay
in a caravan here.
So now that we've got grandchildren
and Mum's got great-grandchildren,
we've decided
to carry on the tradition
and bring the new ones along.
The water is the clearest water
I've swum in in ages.
It's beautiful,
and I love the beach
and, now I've got over
the fear of them,
I'm really loving
the jellyfish as well.
It's all the fun
of the seaside here.
But on the grassy side
of the tracks,
the sand gives way to hard work.
David is the third generation
of his family to farm this land.
"Taid" is a grandfather in Welsh.
So, Taid came here in 1926,
year of the General Strike,
and then they stayed on here
till 1957
when my mum and dad took over.
Taid, he farmed with horses,
so he didn't have a tractor,
but he'd use a train.
But a lot of livestock from
this area was moved by train,
cattle and sheep.
They're all organic.
Here's the bull here,
his name is Glyn.
He's very calm, which is
a good thing in a bull.
They've all got names.
Livvy, George.
George is far more vicious
than any other of the cows here,
so we give her plenty of space.
If I wanted to move them,
I'd call them.
I just do it a couple of times.
I'm sure it's been used
since ancient times.
You know, I'd say
HE CALLS THEM
And they'd follow.
They think I'm joking now,
cos they're happy here.
I love the estuary,
it changes colour and
it changes shape every day,
every hour, every minute.
The trains arrive -
enigmatic, the way
it hugs the estuary there.
Somebody had the vision
to build that line,
and it's not an easy place
to build -
there's five tunnels
along this piece,
goes through
the golf course as well.
And there's a friend of mine
playing golf
and he hits the ball-
bang - and hits the train.
The train driver stops
to remonstrate
and my friend shouts back at him,
"if you'd been on time
he wouldn't have hit you!"
True story.
My grandfather, Taid,
if he could hear the train
in Dovey Junction,
it would mean that
the wind was up in the east,
and it would be
one of the factors he'd use
to decide whether he was
going to cut hay or not -
my father the same.
As it has done for over 100 years,
the train continues
to mark the rhythm of time
for all the people living
and working along its route.
Our next stop is so remote
that it's only
one person's commute to work.
The wide Dovey Estuary
was a big obstacle
for the engineers working on
the next part of the Cambrian Line.
A bridge was deemed
too difficult to build.
Instead, the line was routed
along the north side of the estuary
from Aberdovey
to Dovey Junction station.
The line then splits -
one branch running
southwest to Aberystwyth,
and the other running eastwards
to Machynlleth and England.
Dovey Junction appears to be
in the middle of nowhere.
And today only one person gets off.
I am pretty much the only commuter
at Dovey Junction.
And if I go anywhere else,
the train staff
like to point out to me
that I'm not at my correct station.
We have a collection of wildlife
here that is quite unique.
There's not many commutes
where you could count 15 white
egrets, or spot three herons,
or come past a collection
of shell ducks every morning.
And the way with the tides
on the saltmarshes as well,
you never know quite
what you're going to get.
Kim's commute is remarkable
in another way, too.
Her journey takes her back
into Wales' wild past
where magnificent birds of prey
flew free across the country.
A short bike ride from the station,
and Kim clocks in at
the Cors Dyfi Wildlife Reserve.
So, through this window here,
you can see right the way
across to the osprey nest.
When the ospreys
come back each year,
it's an absolutely amazing feeling,
just to know they've made it
safely through their migration,
they've made that journey
back from West Africa,
and then they're here, and then
we look forward to the eggs,
to the chicks and
to those chicks then going on
and hopefully starting nests
of their own in a few years' time.
We just have one breeding pair here,
they've got three chicks
at the moment.
There are five
breeding pairs in Wales,
so very much
a recovering population.
In the 1990s, ospreys were
extinct in the UK.
In the 1950s, they began
to recover in Scotland
and it's not until recent years,
20 years ago, that they've begun
to recover in Wales.
They were persecuted
and their habitat destroyed,
which meant we had
no breeding pairs left.
The male osprey, just about
to jump onto the perch out here,
with a fish in his talons.
The osprey barely look up
from their fish dinner
when the train passes their nest.
These mighty birds don't need
permission to cross the track,
but everything else
on two or four legs does.
Even though it might look as though
the trains can
take care of themselves
as they trundle their way
along the line,
in fact, they, and everyone
crossing the track,
are totally dependent
on this control room,
the most hi-tech in the UK.
Machynlleth Signalling Centre.
One car. One minute.
Yes, you're safe
to cross the railway now.
ALARM WAILS
Thank you. Ta-ra.
That was Borthwen Farm.
It's got quite a large
caravan park there.
One of the users wanted permission
to go across the railway line.
Despite its sophisticated equipment,
this nerve centre
still requiresa human
to tell people when it's safe
to cross on foot.
Machynlleth Signalling Centre.
One minibus. One minute.
Hold on, I'll just see
where the train is.
Just bear with me.
No, it's not safe to cross.
There's a train coming towards you
from the Barmouth direction.
Can you wait for that train
to pass you, please?
Thank you. Ta-ra.
Some months of the year,
we move more people
across our railway line
than we move along our railway line.
We've got open access now
to the coast,
moving the sheep for shearing,
the caravaners.
It gets very busy now -
school holidays are always busy.
That's fine. OK. Bye.
Because it's a single line,
we have to have two bits of track
in somewhere like Harlech here,
where we've got a crossing point.
So each train comes in and waits
for the other train to pass it,
and then it can carry on
on its journey.
If a train is late,
if it's late coming in,
then the other one
will be late leaving as well.
This now is where two trains are
actually crossing as we speak.
It is a challenge
to keep it running,
because we have so many things
that trip us up, you know.
It's just anything from
a large group of golfers
turning up at Harlech, for instance,
with their golf carts.
It takes three minutes
to get them on a train
when we allow two -
and that's enough
to put us out one minute.
Running the Cambrian Line
is a very exacting business
TANNOY: 'We are now at Machynlleth.'
but Carl loves his job.
The people who work on the railway
are all very talented,
they enjoy their job
and it's a pleasure to be
amongst them all day, to be honest.
I'm a very lucky man.
The control centre
is based here, in Machynlleth,
which is a very special place.
Some of the town's inhabitants
are still reeling
from the shock decision in 1955
to make the city of Cardiff
the capital of Wales,
and not Machynlleth.
We see before us here
the Parliament House,
the Senedd-Dy,
Owain Glyndwr, 1404.
Where he called two
from each comote in Wales
and he was crowned Prince of Wales.
What more cultural heritage
would you want than that?
It's massive.
Here we are.
This picture shows Owain Glyndwr
crowned with his scepire.
He transformed himself
from rebel leader
to ruler of a virtually,
at that time, independent Wales.
Owain Glyndwr hammered the English
up on Hyddgen Mountain.
1401, he hammered them.
Even bigger hammerings
than they get at Twickenham.
He hammered them.
He came down the mountain
to Machynlleth
and he felt so sure
that this place should be
the first parliament of Wales.
And it was, and it is known as
the ancient capital of Wales.
MUSIC: "Highland Cathedral"
There is nothing the town likes more
than Owain's modern counterpart,
Prince Charles,
the present Prince of Wales,
to pay a visit.
We're leaving the realm of princes
and heading to a station that's
a shrine to its past manager,
who loved his job and his poetry.
We're making our way
down the Cambrian Line
and our next stop is a village
that's steeped
in the music and words
so important to Welsh tradition.
THEY SPEAK IN WELSH
Delma Thomas is a retired teacher
who runs an organisation devoted to
keeping her native language alive.
I'm very proud to be Welsh.
I think in welsh,
I do everything in Welsh,
I dream in Welsh - everything,
through the medium
of the Welsh language.
I do speak English a little bit.
But I prefer speaking in Welsh
and I translate
as I'm going along now.
There's no longer
a station master at Caersws.
But the spirit of one man
who spent almost 20 years
running the station
is still very much present.
Ceiriog. That's a Welsh
Very famous Welsh poet.
John Ceiriog Hughes.
He was station master here
and he collected old Welsh tunes
and he wrote very many of his poems
to fit onto these tunes as songs
and they've become
very, very popular.
I mean, if you showed him that shed,
he could make a song about it.
You know, he could write
about anything and everything.
The old ticket office
on the other side of the track
has hardly been touched
since the days of
John Ceiriog Hughes.
It's as it was.
I think it's the same carpet.
THEY LAUGH
He would sell
the tickets there for you.
And this is where
he was sitting down.
Had the fire, here, lit.
All his cupboards
and the shelves there
with all the things that he needed
to get the service going.
This is a tangible connection,
isn't it, with Ceiriog?
It's wonderful. Wonderful.
Oh, yes. Now, then.
They're still storing
a few things here.
He probably sat down here
and got his pencil out
to write his poems.
He used to boil a kettle on there
and have his cup of tea in here.
Would it be tea or would he
have something stronger?
Well, yes.
I mustn't tell tales
about him, must I?
He allegedly did like his tipple,
I'm not quite sure which brand.
And then he adopted, shall I say,
the Bohemian lifestyle.
A shopkeeper was complaining one day
that he was two weeks late
getting two bags of flour
because Ceiriog was so involved
in writing the poetry,
he forgot to put them on the train.
This now-celebrated poet,
sometimes called
the Wordsworth of Wales,
is buried close by.
He died in poverty
at the age of just 54.
John Ceiriog Hughes.
Born 25th September 1832
and died 23rd April 1887.
And then this
is one he himself wrote,
for his own epitaph.
“Carotid eiflau cerddorcfl' -
carodd iéwdd,
"Carodd fyw'n naturiol,
"Carodd gerdd yn angerddol:
"Dyma ei lwch, a dim lol"
"He loved musical words,
he loved poets,
"he loved to live naturally,
"He loved poems passionately:
"This is his dust, no nonsense."
He's got a great
sense of humour. Yes.
You know, here's my dust
and no nonsense,
you know, that's the end of it.
Back on the train, and
we'll soon be leaving Wales behind.
The movements of all trains
coming in to Shrewsbury
on the Cambrian Line
are controlled here.
This is currently the world's
largest mechanical signal box
that's left in operation.
There were, of course,
others that were bigger
but, as this technology
has been closed down and got rid of,
this is now the largest
left in the world.
Unlike the hi-tech setup
at Machynlleth,
this remarkable
historic control room
is 117 years old
and still going strong.
Jamie is a Signalman
who revels in the fact
that he's still using
the old technology.
BELLS RINGS
I love the fact that
you're sort of dealing with stuff
that's happening
right in front of you.
You're dealing with
mechanical signals,
mechanical points,
watching the trains go past.
It's not all happening
on a computer screen.
So that's for
that freight train there,
which will now pass the box
on its way to near Shotton,
demarcates junction.
Each colour has a different meaning.
White levers are
no longer in use, regrettably.
Black levers are the points.
So that's where we change
the direction of the tracks
and route the trains
in different directions.
Blue levers lock the points
and then the red levers
are the signals themselves.
I actually started
my signalling career
as a volunteer on a steam railway
and the job that I'm doing now
is exactly the same.
BELL DINGS TWICE
Basically, we communicate
from box to box by bell code -
it's a bit like Morse code,
it's absolutely unequivocal,
you can't mistake a bell code
in the way a phone call
could be mistaken.
Those two beats on the bell then
was Abbey Forgate telling me
that we've got a train
entering the section between me and
him, coming toward me, on the line.
So I acknowledge it
by sending two beats back to him
and I move the indicator over
to "Train On Line"
and, when it gets to me,
I will tell him
that it's got to me, complete
with its red lights on the back
and then we're ready to start again.
When you're here sort of
in the late evening
and the sunlight's falling on it,
you think, wow, this has been here
for 116-odd years now
and, you know, we're just
the latest in a long line
of signalmen to be working it.
BELL DINGS
BELL DINGS THREE TIMES
Jamie has given our train
the all clear
to proceed into Shrewsbury station.
Our glorious journey has
taken us from grand mountains
to bastions of
Welsh historic battles,
steam-train heaven
and the turquoise-blue waters
of Aberdovey and beyond.
A nostalgic voyage
through Wales' heartland
on the great Cambrian Line.
Take a seat on the Cambrian line,
and be whisked away
on an unforgettable voyage
to a lost world.
We'll take you back in time
to the land of majestic castles
When you see it in front of you,
you realise its greatness.
and ingenious
Victorian engineering.
Many a story has been told
on here, on this viaduct.
We'll spend a fabulously
old-fashioned day at the seaside
Love the beach.
And now I've got over
the fear of them,
I'm really loving
the jellyfish as well.
drop in at an astonishing
make-believe Mediterranean village
on the beautiful coast of Wales
It's a little pocket of madness,
I guess you'd call it.
And welcome the return
of these stunning birds of prey
to their ancient homelands.
We'll meet the people who live
and work along this special railway.
I think in Welsh,
I do everything in Welsh,
I dream in Welsh - everything.
This is no ordinary
railway journey -
this is one of the most scenic
railway journeys in the world.
North Wales.
This modest railway station
might seem an unlikely start
to our train journey,
but this little town in North Wales
is the gateway to
a spectacularly scenic railway line
that can compete with
anywhere in the world.
The Cambrian Line begins
in the coastal town of Pwllheli
and runs 71 miles
to the English border.
It travels past
ancient castles,
Wales' highest
mountain,
and miles of gorgeous
golden beaches
from Barmouth
to Aberdovey.
The train turns inland
to historic Machynlleth,
and then passes through Caersws,
a shrine to Welsh poetry,
before our final
destination, Shrewsbury.
This run is one of
the most beautiful lines
that you will ever be on.
I mean, it is stunning.
It hits the coast,
it goes through the hills,
it is magnificent.
Archaeologist Graham can often
be found excavating Roman remains.
But the other love of his life
is the history of his native Wales.
This line starts
in the early 19th century.
There are a lot of small
railways throughout North Wales
which amalgamate to become
the Cambrian Railway,
and these lines were primarily
for exporting slate,
getting slate from
the quarries to the coast,
to be exported into England
and to other parts of the world.
Welsh slate was highly valued
as far back as Roman times.
But it was the Victorian
house-building boom
that inspired the Welsh
to move the slate by rail
to cope with the demand.
TANNOY: 'We will shortly
be arriving at Criccieih.
'Thank you.'
We've only travelled
eight miles down the line,
but it's worth getting off
at the seaside town of Criccieth
to see this awe-inspiring
medieval castle.
It's been inspiring
artists for years,
even the great JMW Turner.
Sitting atop a dramatic
rocky headland,
it played an important part
in Wales' constant struggle for
independence from the English.
It's an iconic symbol of Welshness.
This castle, initially
built by the Welsh,
later conquered by the English,
becomes a sign of oppression -
as do many of the other castles
in North Wales -
this ring of steel
that was set up by Edward I
to compress the Welsh into their
mountains and not let them out.
Even though it's later taken by
the English, it's a Welsh castle,
and it'll always be a Welsh castle.
The Cambrian Line wends its way
along this sparkling coast.
Having spent 20 years
working on its maintenance,
every inch of the route
is familiar to Trevor.
Although I'm a retired railwayman,
I've travelled the railways
throughout Europe
and nobody can argue with me
that this is probably the best
railway line, certainly in Europe.
The scenery changes
near enough on a monthly basis.
Next stop is the town
of Porthmadog
or was that "Porthma-DOG"
DOG BARKS
a town that seems to have
a large population
of train-loving canines.
Thanks to the myriad of rail lines
built to transport slate from
the quarries down to the port,
this isn't the only station
in Porthmadog.
Across town, there's
a blast from the past,
a station just for steam trains.
These narrow-gauge routes
are run by a whole army
of steam enthusiasts.
Steve is the fireman today
in charge of getting
this engine ready to go.
Oh, I love the teamwork, the people.
It's a group of people coming
together from all walks of life,
working together
in a passion that they love.
All the hard graft
is done at Boston Lodge,
the oldest such engineering works
in the world.
These mighty,
time-honoured locomotives
can burn up to
a ton of coal an hour,
depending on speed
and the gradient of the track.
They take around two hours to light
from cold to operating pressure.
When I was a kid,
I just dreamt of going
on the footplate, once,
of a steam engine,
and here I am doing this
and, every time I come,
I get a huge thrill.
There's nothing to beat it.
Richard's day job is in
a hospital burns unit in Stockport.
But today he's a volunteer
in charge of the fire box.
In the real world,
driver Paul is a retired
college lecturer.
He's been escaping here
for almost 50 years.
I don't do this all the time,
I do this, erm
two or three days a month,
something like that.
When I can escape
from my wife and do it.
And what does your wife say?
You'll have to cut that bit out!
THEY LAUGH
If you like,
this is my mistress, this is.
At least she knows where I am
when I'm doing this.
At the Harbour station,
passengers can buy a ticket
to ride the Ffestiniog Line
to Blaenau
or the Welsh Highland Railway
up to Carnarvon.
On this glorious trip back in time,
you can enjoy a taste
of old-fashioned,
first-class Welsh service.
A still cold water.
Still water. And Welsh rarebit.
Welsh Rarebit.
As it comes, sir, or with onions?
At the village of Rhyd Ddu,
it's time to change trains.
You can't come all this way
and not take a trip up
Wales' highest mountain, Snowdon.
Next, our Cambrian Railway adventure
transports us to a magical
Mediterranean wonderland
built on the coast of Wales.
We're back on
the glorious Cambrian Line.
A voyage that takes us through
the stunning scenery of North Wales
between the sea and the mountains.
A short hop from Minffordd station,
we step into
a totally different world.
This is Portmeirion,
a fairy-tale village
created a century ago
by the eccentric architect
Clough Williams-Ellis.
Location manager Meurig
is passionate about the place.
I find ii incredibly
inspiring here
because, you know, one man
had this vision and he did it.
You know, he'd waited 20 years
to find the right site to do this
and he bought it for £5,000,
a loan from the Midland Bank,
and I don't think any bank
would ever give a loan
to buy and build
something like this again
but, at that time, they did,
and he then spent
50 years building it.
Clough Williams-Ellis had
a playful approach to architecture
and loved to mix
the new with the old.
He rescued buildings
from demolition,
like this Georgian bath house
from war-damaged Bristol,
which he transported to Portmeirion
stone by stone.
The beauty of this
was the proximity to the rail line -
all these people were coming here,
before cars were common
and easier to get hold of,
people come by train.
It's a little pocket of madness,
I guess you'd call it.
But all the mad details
need constant maintenance.
Hi, Nige. Hi, Meurig.
How's it going?
OK, thank you. Well done.
Nigel Simmons has been
the resident artist at Portmeirion
since 1984.
This wall is new.
So, from over there,
you can see a big blank wall,
if I hadn't painted it.
So now I'm just trying
to camouflage it
and make it look like
the rest of the foliage.
What I like about coming here
and doing things,
is that they're all different.
Like these top windows
of the terrace of housing there,
they're not windows,
they're just painted on.
The bottom ones are,
but the top ones are false windows.
And Nigel has become infamous
for pushing back his deadlines.
You'll be finishing soon the night?
Uh I don't know what time it is.
It's nearly midday.
Oh, another half an hour
and I'll jack it in.
When I first started here,
I started 9-5.
And I just
Bits I did
When I came back the next day,
the bits I did between 3pm and 5pm
were not very good,
so I had to redo it.
So, what I did then, was jack it in
at three o'clock in the afternoon,
but then I found all I did in
the afternoon wasn't very good.
So now I jack it in at lunchtime.
You keep threatening to retire,
don't you, Nigel? Oh, yes.
That's right.
I've been threatening to retire
since a long time.
But they won't let me.
Well, no. That's because,
as I keep telling Nige,
it's like the Hotel California,
isn't it?
You know, you can
check out any time you like,
but you can never leave.
Never leave, yes.
Unlike Nigel, we have
no problem leaving,
and we're soon safely
back on the train,
heading for Harlech
with retired railwayman Trevor
and his fond memories
of childhood journeys.
It frightens me when I think
how long I've been
travelling on the train.
But you never get bored of it.
Having the schoolchildren,
I think that brings you
back down to earth sometimes.
We all think we all know everything,
and then you get the youngsters
that'll tell you things
you never even thought of.
We're coming into Harlech now,
1957 the school was built
and I attended the school there.
I travelled every day
back and forward,
so that was a 21-22 mile
journey every day.
The railway line passes
directly underneath
the splendid Harlech Castle.
The castle sits on the Harlech Dome,
this great geological
formation in front of us,
which sits on the end
of the Rhinogydd mountains.
It's said that this is one of the
oldest rock formations in the world.
When the castle was built
in the 13th century,
the sea lapped at its foot.
But since then,
the water has retreated.
Harlech Castle is a wonderful castle
built by a Frenchman
working for Edward I.
This great bastion of power
dominates the landscape,
with views in every direction.
The castle is then snatched
from the English
by the Welsh rebel leader
Owain Glyndwr.
Harlech Castle, once a symbol
of power for Edward,
becomes a symbol of Welsh identity.
And to imagine the bastions
in the towers behind us
having Welsh banners and Welsh flags
and ensigns flying all around,
it must have formed an incredible
symbol for Welshness
and for the Welsh people
to rally around.
It's time for a pint at the pub
by the railway line
at the foot of this great fortress
which held out for seven years
in a spectacular siege.
It ended in 1468,
and it's a very proud moment
in Welsh history.
Lloniannau.
This siege was so epic,
it's filled the hearts
of every Welshman.
The captain of the castle
was a Welshman,
it's got a Welsh garrison,
and so this siege became
immortalised in Welsh song.
SONG: Men of Harlech
# Harlech cyfod dy faneri
# Gwel y celyn enyn yn I
# Meion wyr oll I wnaedd I
# Cmru f0 am byth
# Aed y waedd ac aed y weddi
# I bob cwr o'n gwlad uchelfri
# Nes adsinia yr eiryri
# Cymru f0 am byth
# Arwyr, sawdwyr sydyn
1% RhuKh rwyn at y sewn
# Gyrwn ef I ffoi o nant
# A bryn a phant a Dyffryn
# Chwifiwn faner goruchafiaeth
# Gorfoleddwn yn ei al aeth
# Clywir llef ein buddugol iaeth
1% Cymru f0 am byKh. 1%
APPLAUSE
The train hugs the stunning
coastline for the next 12 miles.
In Cardigan Bay you may even
see seals and dolphins,
until you arrive in Barmouth,
a place where the sea
meets the mountains
and the Victorian engineers
had a mighty problem to solve -
how to build a lifeline
linking the communities
on each side of the estuary.
This is the famous Barmouth Viaduct.
It's now 152 years old.
My late father, he worked
on the viaduct before me,
I did spend 20 years
on this viaduct,
in all sorts of weathers,
and believe me, on a late Saturday
night, early Sunday morning,
when there's an east wind
coming down the river,
doesn't matter how well
you're wrapped up,
it's like a knife, the wind can be.
Originally there were shelters
so locals could take advantage
of the charms of the estuary
whatever the weather.
When we used to have
the shelters as kids,
we played on here,
the fishing from here,
start your early courting
as youngsters,
you'd come on the viaduct
with those shelters here.
Many a story has been told on here,
on this viaduct.
All right, come and see my baby.
This is the
This is what it's all about.
The viaduct has a swing bridge
which used to open to allow
large boats to pass through,
and Trevor was one of the railwaymen
tasked with its operation.
We would take out
four little lengths of rail,
one on each end here,
and the same on the opposite side.
We would get a key from
the signal box in Barmouth
which protected the railway line
so there's no trains come,
and we'd put the key in here,
unlocked it,
and we could pull
the two levers forward,
cos the levers pull the boats out
to allow the viaduct to turn.
And this is where
you'd have your handles,
three or four men - one here,
one there on the other side -
and that's how the whole viaduct
or the whole span
turned round, that way.
Opening it was straightforward,
but closing it could
sometimes take a lot longer.
Problem being,
in the middle of the summer,
once you'd opened it, the heat
built up, the metal expanded,
and you could never
close it immediately.
If it was a very hot day,
you may be there several hours,
and there'd be a welder
perhaps just chapping off
a little bit here and there
so he could get the bridge closed.
I can remember, as a youngster,
we only used to have
the one train on a Sunday,
it would come in first thing
in the morning,
and same in Barmouth,
so the bridge could be opened,
and the train would come back out
at six o'clock at night.
If it had been a very hot day,
the train never
come back out of Barmouth,
cos you couldn't
close the bridge again.
It's not a problem these days,
as the bridge hasn't been open
for more than 20 years.
The views as you cross the river
are truly breath-taking.
But it seems you can have
too much of a good thing,
according to these two
retired train drivers.
I used to work on it for years,
I used to enjoy it,
it's especially all right
in the summer,
bit rough in the winter.
Just going once and back is nice,
have a nice day.
But, you know
when we had to do it twice,
it was a bit, like
It were a bit boring
and monotonous, weren't it?
You know, you're stopping
in all these 27 stops.
Here the train squeezes
between the sand dunes,
and even a golf course,
until it reaches the ever-popular
seaside resort Aberdovey,
with it's fantastic,
unspoiled sandy beach
stretching for miles.
There's nine of us. There's my mum.
When my children were young,
Mum and I used to
bring them every year.
We used to come and stay
in a caravan here.
So now that we've got grandchildren
and Mum's got great-grandchildren,
we've decided
to carry on the tradition
and bring the new ones along.
The water is the clearest water
I've swum in in ages.
It's beautiful,
and I love the beach
and, now I've got over
the fear of them,
I'm really loving
the jellyfish as well.
It's all the fun
of the seaside here.
But on the grassy side
of the tracks,
the sand gives way to hard work.
David is the third generation
of his family to farm this land.
"Taid" is a grandfather in Welsh.
So, Taid came here in 1926,
year of the General Strike,
and then they stayed on here
till 1957
when my mum and dad took over.
Taid, he farmed with horses,
so he didn't have a tractor,
but he'd use a train.
But a lot of livestock from
this area was moved by train,
cattle and sheep.
They're all organic.
Here's the bull here,
his name is Glyn.
He's very calm, which is
a good thing in a bull.
They've all got names.
Livvy, George.
George is far more vicious
than any other of the cows here,
so we give her plenty of space.
If I wanted to move them,
I'd call them.
I just do it a couple of times.
I'm sure it's been used
since ancient times.
You know, I'd say
HE CALLS THEM
And they'd follow.
They think I'm joking now,
cos they're happy here.
I love the estuary,
it changes colour and
it changes shape every day,
every hour, every minute.
The trains arrive -
enigmatic, the way
it hugs the estuary there.
Somebody had the vision
to build that line,
and it's not an easy place
to build -
there's five tunnels
along this piece,
goes through
the golf course as well.
And there's a friend of mine
playing golf
and he hits the ball-
bang - and hits the train.
The train driver stops
to remonstrate
and my friend shouts back at him,
"if you'd been on time
he wouldn't have hit you!"
True story.
My grandfather, Taid,
if he could hear the train
in Dovey Junction,
it would mean that
the wind was up in the east,
and it would be
one of the factors he'd use
to decide whether he was
going to cut hay or not -
my father the same.
As it has done for over 100 years,
the train continues
to mark the rhythm of time
for all the people living
and working along its route.
Our next stop is so remote
that it's only
one person's commute to work.
The wide Dovey Estuary
was a big obstacle
for the engineers working on
the next part of the Cambrian Line.
A bridge was deemed
too difficult to build.
Instead, the line was routed
along the north side of the estuary
from Aberdovey
to Dovey Junction station.
The line then splits -
one branch running
southwest to Aberystwyth,
and the other running eastwards
to Machynlleth and England.
Dovey Junction appears to be
in the middle of nowhere.
And today only one person gets off.
I am pretty much the only commuter
at Dovey Junction.
And if I go anywhere else,
the train staff
like to point out to me
that I'm not at my correct station.
We have a collection of wildlife
here that is quite unique.
There's not many commutes
where you could count 15 white
egrets, or spot three herons,
or come past a collection
of shell ducks every morning.
And the way with the tides
on the saltmarshes as well,
you never know quite
what you're going to get.
Kim's commute is remarkable
in another way, too.
Her journey takes her back
into Wales' wild past
where magnificent birds of prey
flew free across the country.
A short bike ride from the station,
and Kim clocks in at
the Cors Dyfi Wildlife Reserve.
So, through this window here,
you can see right the way
across to the osprey nest.
When the ospreys
come back each year,
it's an absolutely amazing feeling,
just to know they've made it
safely through their migration,
they've made that journey
back from West Africa,
and then they're here, and then
we look forward to the eggs,
to the chicks and
to those chicks then going on
and hopefully starting nests
of their own in a few years' time.
We just have one breeding pair here,
they've got three chicks
at the moment.
There are five
breeding pairs in Wales,
so very much
a recovering population.
In the 1990s, ospreys were
extinct in the UK.
In the 1950s, they began
to recover in Scotland
and it's not until recent years,
20 years ago, that they've begun
to recover in Wales.
They were persecuted
and their habitat destroyed,
which meant we had
no breeding pairs left.
The male osprey, just about
to jump onto the perch out here,
with a fish in his talons.
The osprey barely look up
from their fish dinner
when the train passes their nest.
These mighty birds don't need
permission to cross the track,
but everything else
on two or four legs does.
Even though it might look as though
the trains can
take care of themselves
as they trundle their way
along the line,
in fact, they, and everyone
crossing the track,
are totally dependent
on this control room,
the most hi-tech in the UK.
Machynlleth Signalling Centre.
One car. One minute.
Yes, you're safe
to cross the railway now.
ALARM WAILS
Thank you. Ta-ra.
That was Borthwen Farm.
It's got quite a large
caravan park there.
One of the users wanted permission
to go across the railway line.
Despite its sophisticated equipment,
this nerve centre
still requiresa human
to tell people when it's safe
to cross on foot.
Machynlleth Signalling Centre.
One minibus. One minute.
Hold on, I'll just see
where the train is.
Just bear with me.
No, it's not safe to cross.
There's a train coming towards you
from the Barmouth direction.
Can you wait for that train
to pass you, please?
Thank you. Ta-ra.
Some months of the year,
we move more people
across our railway line
than we move along our railway line.
We've got open access now
to the coast,
moving the sheep for shearing,
the caravaners.
It gets very busy now -
school holidays are always busy.
That's fine. OK. Bye.
Because it's a single line,
we have to have two bits of track
in somewhere like Harlech here,
where we've got a crossing point.
So each train comes in and waits
for the other train to pass it,
and then it can carry on
on its journey.
If a train is late,
if it's late coming in,
then the other one
will be late leaving as well.
This now is where two trains are
actually crossing as we speak.
It is a challenge
to keep it running,
because we have so many things
that trip us up, you know.
It's just anything from
a large group of golfers
turning up at Harlech, for instance,
with their golf carts.
It takes three minutes
to get them on a train
when we allow two -
and that's enough
to put us out one minute.
Running the Cambrian Line
is a very exacting business
TANNOY: 'We are now at Machynlleth.'
but Carl loves his job.
The people who work on the railway
are all very talented,
they enjoy their job
and it's a pleasure to be
amongst them all day, to be honest.
I'm a very lucky man.
The control centre
is based here, in Machynlleth,
which is a very special place.
Some of the town's inhabitants
are still reeling
from the shock decision in 1955
to make the city of Cardiff
the capital of Wales,
and not Machynlleth.
We see before us here
the Parliament House,
the Senedd-Dy,
Owain Glyndwr, 1404.
Where he called two
from each comote in Wales
and he was crowned Prince of Wales.
What more cultural heritage
would you want than that?
It's massive.
Here we are.
This picture shows Owain Glyndwr
crowned with his scepire.
He transformed himself
from rebel leader
to ruler of a virtually,
at that time, independent Wales.
Owain Glyndwr hammered the English
up on Hyddgen Mountain.
1401, he hammered them.
Even bigger hammerings
than they get at Twickenham.
He hammered them.
He came down the mountain
to Machynlleth
and he felt so sure
that this place should be
the first parliament of Wales.
And it was, and it is known as
the ancient capital of Wales.
MUSIC: "Highland Cathedral"
There is nothing the town likes more
than Owain's modern counterpart,
Prince Charles,
the present Prince of Wales,
to pay a visit.
We're leaving the realm of princes
and heading to a station that's
a shrine to its past manager,
who loved his job and his poetry.
We're making our way
down the Cambrian Line
and our next stop is a village
that's steeped
in the music and words
so important to Welsh tradition.
THEY SPEAK IN WELSH
Delma Thomas is a retired teacher
who runs an organisation devoted to
keeping her native language alive.
I'm very proud to be Welsh.
I think in welsh,
I do everything in Welsh,
I dream in Welsh - everything,
through the medium
of the Welsh language.
I do speak English a little bit.
But I prefer speaking in Welsh
and I translate
as I'm going along now.
There's no longer
a station master at Caersws.
But the spirit of one man
who spent almost 20 years
running the station
is still very much present.
Ceiriog. That's a Welsh
Very famous Welsh poet.
John Ceiriog Hughes.
He was station master here
and he collected old Welsh tunes
and he wrote very many of his poems
to fit onto these tunes as songs
and they've become
very, very popular.
I mean, if you showed him that shed,
he could make a song about it.
You know, he could write
about anything and everything.
The old ticket office
on the other side of the track
has hardly been touched
since the days of
John Ceiriog Hughes.
It's as it was.
I think it's the same carpet.
THEY LAUGH
He would sell
the tickets there for you.
And this is where
he was sitting down.
Had the fire, here, lit.
All his cupboards
and the shelves there
with all the things that he needed
to get the service going.
This is a tangible connection,
isn't it, with Ceiriog?
It's wonderful. Wonderful.
Oh, yes. Now, then.
They're still storing
a few things here.
He probably sat down here
and got his pencil out
to write his poems.
He used to boil a kettle on there
and have his cup of tea in here.
Would it be tea or would he
have something stronger?
Well, yes.
I mustn't tell tales
about him, must I?
He allegedly did like his tipple,
I'm not quite sure which brand.
And then he adopted, shall I say,
the Bohemian lifestyle.
A shopkeeper was complaining one day
that he was two weeks late
getting two bags of flour
because Ceiriog was so involved
in writing the poetry,
he forgot to put them on the train.
This now-celebrated poet,
sometimes called
the Wordsworth of Wales,
is buried close by.
He died in poverty
at the age of just 54.
John Ceiriog Hughes.
Born 25th September 1832
and died 23rd April 1887.
And then this
is one he himself wrote,
for his own epitaph.
“Carotid eiflau cerddorcfl' -
carodd iéwdd,
"Carodd fyw'n naturiol,
"Carodd gerdd yn angerddol:
"Dyma ei lwch, a dim lol"
"He loved musical words,
he loved poets,
"he loved to live naturally,
"He loved poems passionately:
"This is his dust, no nonsense."
He's got a great
sense of humour. Yes.
You know, here's my dust
and no nonsense,
you know, that's the end of it.
Back on the train, and
we'll soon be leaving Wales behind.
The movements of all trains
coming in to Shrewsbury
on the Cambrian Line
are controlled here.
This is currently the world's
largest mechanical signal box
that's left in operation.
There were, of course,
others that were bigger
but, as this technology
has been closed down and got rid of,
this is now the largest
left in the world.
Unlike the hi-tech setup
at Machynlleth,
this remarkable
historic control room
is 117 years old
and still going strong.
Jamie is a Signalman
who revels in the fact
that he's still using
the old technology.
BELLS RINGS
I love the fact that
you're sort of dealing with stuff
that's happening
right in front of you.
You're dealing with
mechanical signals,
mechanical points,
watching the trains go past.
It's not all happening
on a computer screen.
So that's for
that freight train there,
which will now pass the box
on its way to near Shotton,
demarcates junction.
Each colour has a different meaning.
White levers are
no longer in use, regrettably.
Black levers are the points.
So that's where we change
the direction of the tracks
and route the trains
in different directions.
Blue levers lock the points
and then the red levers
are the signals themselves.
I actually started
my signalling career
as a volunteer on a steam railway
and the job that I'm doing now
is exactly the same.
BELL DINGS TWICE
Basically, we communicate
from box to box by bell code -
it's a bit like Morse code,
it's absolutely unequivocal,
you can't mistake a bell code
in the way a phone call
could be mistaken.
Those two beats on the bell then
was Abbey Forgate telling me
that we've got a train
entering the section between me and
him, coming toward me, on the line.
So I acknowledge it
by sending two beats back to him
and I move the indicator over
to "Train On Line"
and, when it gets to me,
I will tell him
that it's got to me, complete
with its red lights on the back
and then we're ready to start again.
When you're here sort of
in the late evening
and the sunlight's falling on it,
you think, wow, this has been here
for 116-odd years now
and, you know, we're just
the latest in a long line
of signalmen to be working it.
BELL DINGS
BELL DINGS THREE TIMES
Jamie has given our train
the all clear
to proceed into Shrewsbury station.
Our glorious journey has
taken us from grand mountains
to bastions of
Welsh historic battles,
steam-train heaven
and the turquoise-blue waters
of Aberdovey and beyond.
A nostalgic voyage
through Wales' heartland
on the great Cambrian Line.