Left: 0-4-0WT No. 2 Dolgoch at Wharf station on April 15, 1949, ready for the 09.25am departure. All four carriages and four slate wagons had been laid on for an anticipated flood of passengers for the Easter start to the operating season. The carriage next to the loco is No. 4 ‘Lulu’, which was built in 1867 by the Lancaster Carriage and Wagon Works to a different design from the earlier Brown, Marshall carriages. On the right, the point lever is jammed in position with a length of rail to hold it open – the same arrangement appearing in photographs taken as early as the First World War. The station building is in its original form, though the red paintwork has been bleached in the sun.
SEVERAL of the Welsh narrow gauge railways were still running as Britain emerged from the Second World War.
The Vale of Rheidol had resumed passenger services in the summer of 1946 and the Festiniog ran slate trains until August that year, while the Corris limped on until 1948. In the north, the railways serving the Nantlle, Penrhyn and Dinorwic quarries all continued into the 1960s.