The Llithfaen – Miller Street section of the GWR

One has to treat time on my GWR as it is in Blackadder Back and Forth, because time varies from the late 1800s, up to the 1930s, back to about 1912, into the 1970s and back again!

 

 

Abbreviations:

L&MMR – Llanelly and Mynydd Mawr Railway

BP&GVR – Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway

GVR – Gendraeth Valleys Railway

WTR – Westding Tourist Railway

 

 

First to arrive at Llithfaen every day is the coal train from the Great Mountain colliery, headed, as usual, by an ancient 0-6-0T called, not coincidentally, Great Mountain*.  The L&MMR’s driver Alwyn and his fireman Daffydd started out from Cynheidre while it was still dark. The route is winding and steep, and the brake van, all 6 tons of it, is hardly of any use in slowing down even the six wagons needed to carry the output from yesterday’s last shift. Tortoise speed is usual.   It will make three more trips before nightfall.

 

Figure 1 - A Tale of Two Panniers - 7402 will add its loaded wagons to the train being assembled for 2865 to collect, and 1823 removes more empties for return.  The Wolf and Earl of Westding wait after bringing in the parcels train.  The Miller Street yard is pretty full - lots of sheets for the goods porters to handle.  The road to the sea is beyond the yard.

 

At Llithfaen, Great Mountain arrives under the bridge and turns on to the goods loop.  The milk and newspaper vans which came in overnight are parked clear of the turnout to the loop. They will be positioned later for unloading papers and loading milk cans.  Here the engine departs to the shed for coal and water, and the van is pushed off to await the return empties.  No-one saw the midnight newspaper and milk train arrive, but the newsagents’ vans arrive as day breaks, and the farms’ lorries and carts have already left their milk cans. They will return later for their empties.

 

Figure 2 - PC McHugh is considering the legality of a car with just a single headlight, what appears to be the engine in the rear, and foreign registration! - it's a Hanomag.  GW lorry load of spuds is waiting for it's driver.

 

As soon as Great Mountain has cleared the end of the bay for coal and water, the GW’s 5819 will take the local off to Miller Street, a journey made four times every weekday.  At this hour of the day, it’s lightly loaded but, come a summer Saturday, it will be pretty near full, as Miller Street is on the main (comparatively!) road to the coast – open topped cars, caravans, ice cream vans and coaches can be seen beyond the yard limits.  Miller Street is also served by double decked buses!

 

Figure 3 - The train for The Historic Vehicles Rally is loading - the Stig dresses up to load a '93 Benz, a 1934 Simca rally car, 1912 RR and an early Ford T wait their turns.  Llithfaen platform  has a Newspaper van unloading.

 

Soon, an 0-6-0PT, almost as old as Great Mountain, will be shunting more coal wagons; this train is from BP&GVR, which has almost as many mines as the L&MMR.  When the wagons from the collieries of a few more lines are assembled with these, they will await the arrival of the 28xx to take them further down the line, some to go for export, the rest for transhipment to coal factors and merchants, and a few end-users who have their own wagons – firework, mustard and jam factories all use coal for power and heating.

 

Figure 4 - The WTR train pulls in with quite a load in the picnic gondola, and the waiting fancy dress groups wait for them to clear their hampers!

 

Few passenger trains call, just one each day each way, usually in the charge of a venerable outside-framed  4-4-0, most commonly Earl of Westding or The Wolf.

 

Figure 5 - Avonside 0-6-0T Great Mountain brings in the output from last night's shift at the Great Mountain colliery.  The train passes the cattle dock, a Mink F and a 70' Newspaper Van.

 

Later in life, Llithfaen became the home base of the WTR.  Like many new enterprises, it started life with whatever stock it could get which would work.  The WTR was lucky enough to acquire an old limestone quarry engine called Robert, and a motley collection of coaches, vans and road vehicles.   The Railway went through a phase of painting everything in its own colours – bright mid blue – and removing the gas lighting appliances when dynamos were installed.  The board had a change of heart, and later acquisitions were restored to their former operator’s glory.  A Suakim-Berber rigid eight wheeler is followed by a bogie open (as on the NZ Goldfields Railway) with picnic tables down the middle, and a four wheeler from The Hundred of Manhood and Selsey Tramway, and others in like vein.

 

Figure 6 - Welsh PO wagons and Hornby crane, looking over the yard to The Road to the Coast.

 

The WTR converted an old Paris hotel bus to carry intending passengers from surrounding villages into the station, and a Moskvitch estate car to bring in crews from the remote accommodation the station master allows them!  One can book a carriage or two for a private party, and on the platform are a couple of groups of party goers in fancy dress -  Brunel  is there, Charleses Dickens and Darwin, Asterix, Q Vic and her large-ish entourage, a Roman soldier and so on.  Beware the witch!

 

Figure 7 - 1823's driver looks non-plussed at something his fireman has said or done!

 

Rarer trains are a lengthy parcels and perishables – it doesn’t stop unless watering is needed.  Equally rare, usually only seen at general election times, is The Gravy Train, a motley collection of fruit, meat, fish, beer, banana, flour, potato, wine and salt wagons and vans, met on its rare visits by a minute Austin 7 Bisto van.   There have also been seen a train or two of timber, one or two of cattle,  a Special heading for a national Vintage Road Vehicle Exhibition, with a variety of opens, flats, lowmacs and so on, loaded with those cars and lorries (given to me for Christmas!) and which would never have been seen in the Welsh or English countryside!  A suspicious bobby is questioning The Stig about the legality of driving the 1893 Benz. Engineering trains appear as required.  Once, in the middle of summer, a train of eight coaches passed gingerly through on lines not intended for such fast and heavy trains.

 

 

 

*  The early engines of the L&MMR had no numbers, just names.  And, yes, I know that the abbreviation should be LL&MMR, and Llanelli spelled with an i, but the powers-that-be were not Welsh and did not know that LL is a single letter in that alphabet, and cannot be split.  The real line followed a very ancient private railway – some say, the oldest line in Britain to use metal rails, and remnants of that were found a few years ago – in Caermarthenshire which was laid to exploit coal from the great mountain – the mynydd mawr.  The engine itself was taken into GW stock, sold to a colliery and broken up in the 1960s. Both the L&MMR and the BP&GVR were sources of coal, limestone, tinplate, bricks and beer, as was the smaller GVR. Most of the coal was anthracite, and was loaded onto ships at docks south of Llanelli.

 

Figure 8 - The witch is ignored by the 'normal' passenger waiting for the local.  The witch is waiting, with others, for the Westding Tourist Railway's train to arrive, with coaches booked for the fancy dress party.  The WTR's service train waits in the bay.

 

The GWR - gestation

The present railway has taken some years to develop, and one train shed now boasts second hand doors to keep cats out.  It connects directly to the workshop.  Track plans were developed to pose operational challenges, and to show trains in the way I knew them when rather younger: I love the sight of yards full of wagons, some of them quite uniform in type and shape, others distinctly different; and these trains can be seen running slowly along the length of the line.  My other childhood memory is of chocolate and cream coaches behind green steam engines passing in the distance.

 

Figure 9 - 1823, a Wolverhampton product of about 1904 backs the coal empties into Llithfaen yard to go back up the valleys - all belong on the L&MMR, BP&GVR or GVR (see text for names).

 

The GWR – maturation

The track is now all Peco of the UV-stabilised variety.  All points are switched mechanically and electrically with sliders, and there are no sections other than those used for engine storage – tracks are electrified purely by switching the points.  Power is supplied by two 5 amp controllers built for the railway.  The largest problem is the timber base, as I was misadvised as to the type of ply I was buying – it was NOT marine grade and, although given umpteen coats of sealer, any wetness swells and softens the wood, hence the need for water-proof covers.

 

 

The GWR – reasons and solutions

Three engines (all now rebuilt) came from the late Joe Moss during visits to Llithfaen, hence the choice of one station name and its train shed; the other is Miller Street, where my wife spent her growing-up years.  As neither had a railway, I don’t have to explain variations from a prototype!

 

 

I have developed a liking for early railways, and especially for the colliery lines in south Wales.  Alan ‘Locks Siding’ Cliff gave me my first Welsh engine, Great Mountain of the L&MMR, and started my investigation of the line and its surroundings.

 

 

I have acquired or commissioned 0 scale coal wagons for numerous collieries on the L&MMR, the BP&GVR, and the GVR.  I do have some from other collieries, but they rarely move from sidings.  Meetings with some Welsh people in England as well as Wales have given me lots of help. One, Alwyn, whose family were involved in Trimsaran Colliery as well as the Felinfoel brewery gave me immense amounts of information and books about the area, which he walks every summer. Three or four traders have also come up trumps with further books and references. Chris Basten of Dragon Models is a member of The Welsh Railway History Circle and is a fount of knowledge.  Parts of the real L&MMR line are being refurbished, but there is no stock remaining from the line’s early days and they make do with an 08 and a railcar I think.

 

 

Few items other than locos and coal wagons are made for the area (Rob Kosmider makes a model of one coach which, late in its life, ended up on the BP&GVR as an inspection vehicle), so ‘close’ approximations have been painted and lettered (thanks again to Rob Kosmider for the decals) based on some very poor published photos of the stock being carried to Swindon for scrapping.  My latest acquisition is a pannier (Wolverhampton version, hence the shade of green) which had several stints working these lines in south Wales.  I should get a 16xx to represent the early BR(W) period – anyone have one to spare? 0 scale, of course!

 

 

The difficulty with running such early trains – one is from the late 1890s, one from pre Great War – is the lack of road vehicles and the need to camouflage anything modern – road signs, shops, etc.  You may see a policeman taking a long look at a weird car from the 1920s, and some Austin 7s. Few of the commercially available Ford T models are worth getting, although there is a rather expensive one which is excellent, but it has proved difficult to convert it to RHD.  Precious little else suitable is available much before the late 1930s.  Unfortunately, old common cars are rare, old rare cars are common! Bugatti, Delage, RR, Hispanos and the like are rife in the market, but early Rileys, Austins other than 7s, Morris and so on are hard to find.

 

 

 

 Fancy dress people, should you need them, are simple to find – most are pewter souvenirs from tourist collections at Stirling Castle, Exeter Museum and so on, and nicely painted.

 

 

 

The GWR - future

My present work is concentrating on The Environment – back scene, buildings, people – weathering the stock and adding lots of detail – and renewing decals, many of which don’t much like real weather!  Signals have been started, telegraph poles, fences, loading gauges are also getting some attention, too.

 

 

Many, many thanks to my wife for her support, for her gifts to me of the first engine I got from Joe Moss in north Wales and the latest engine from south Wales, and for her contributions to some of the models and their painting.  (She has her own railway, too, for which she has built a scale model of Lelant in north Cornwall and other items).

 

 

A few more years to go ……….

 

 

 

Webmaster’s Note: Unfortunately, this model railway has been dismantled and the various items of rolling stock, locomotives, etc. sold on.  This Galley is dedicated to its existence and inspiration for many…