With tonight being 'Guy Fawkes Night' (Guy Fawkes, the last man to go into the Houses of Parliament with good intentions? Discuss…) I thought I'd post a photo of something I saw at the Bala Lake Railway a couple of years ago…
This 2ft gauge gunpowder wagon was originally used for transporting explosives around the Oakeley Quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog when blasting for slate and had arrived from the Llanberis Lake Railway for restoration a few months previously.
Despite constant disputes over the rates for slate shipment the Oakeley Quarry sent slate over the Ffestiniog Railway until the railway closed in August 1946 but also had a connection to the London & North Western Railway exchange yard in Blaenau Ffestiniog (via an incline built in 1930) and large tonnages of slate were sent out via this connection until the closure of the quarry in 1970.
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