The view stopped me in my tracks. As I cycled along the coast road from Arthog to Tywyn in north Wales, I spotted the spectacular Barmouth railway viaduct snaking across the Mawddach estuary, overshadowed by the brooding mountains of Eryri (Snowdonia). This bridge and the line that crosses it feature heavily in a book published by Pen and Sword Books: Cambrian Railways Gallery.

The Cambrian has a several claims to fame. It was the largest railway taken over by the Great Western Railway in the 1920s grouping of Britain’s railways into four companies. As far as I can tell, the Cambrian was also the only pre-nationalisation rail company to have the plural ‘railways’ in its title, setting the precedent for British Railways and today’s renationalised Great British Railways. But its enduring appeal is the stunningly beautiful route along the Cambrian Coast of north and mid Wales.

It’s all too tempting to describe a railway as romantic, but in this case the epithet doesn’t seem like hyperbole. The Cambrian’s steam trains fought their way heroically over the punishing climb over Talerddig bank before giving passengers a glimpse of the mountains of Llŷn and Eryri from the lovely, lonely coast line to Aberystwyth, Barmouth and Pwllheli. At Friog, just south of the Mawddach, a rare British rock shelter protects trains from rock falls, which twice smashed trains onto the rocky shore below, in 1883 and 1933.

The 13.45 from Morfa Mawddach to Pwllheli crosses Barmouth Viaduct, 9 June 2026. Photo: Rob Skinner

I confess that I’ve never travelled on the Cambrian. But I fell for its charms just before I left school in 1982. I bought a copy of CC Green’s wonderful Cambrian Railways Album from Lears bookshop in Cardiff, and was so intrigued that I bought his sequel – the imaginatively named Cambrian Railways Album 2 – four days later. Years later, when I bought On Cambrian Lines by Derek Huntriss, I was delighted to find it featured a colour photo of a steam-hauled Cambrian Coast Express taken on the day I was born in the early 1960s.

Pen & Sword’s Cambrian Railways Gallery is a valuable addition to Cambrian literature. The book is subtitled A Pictorial Journey Through Time, which hints that this is another album of photos. The photos are fascinating, including rarely seen images from the Manchester Locomotive Society and Andrew Dyke collections. But it’s so much more. Authors David Maidment and Paul Carpenter have included a reasonably detailed historical background to the Cambrian Railways, its route and locomotives, along with fascinating accounts from men who worked on the line, including Sidney Lloyd, who started working for the GWR at Machynlleth shed on the eve of the second world war in 1938.

Above: photo colourisation by Andrew Dyke in Cambrian Railways Gallery. Photo: Andrew Dyke collection

One of the unusual features of Cambrian Railways Gallery is the inclusion of colourised photos from Andrew Dykes’ collection. I’ve included with the authors’ permission this ‘before and after’ example from the book, featuring ex GWR Compton Manor hauling a Whitchurch to Machynlleth train near Abermule in 1959. Colourisation can be controversial, especially when AI is used, but Andrew has done a wonderful job. Few railway photographers shot in colour even in the 1960s, so our impressions of the days of steam are of a monochrome world. Seeing these images transformed into colour makes those faraway times seem much less remote, bringing people captured on film to life 60 or more years after the photographer pressed the shutter.

The book also features many black and white photos of Cambrian locomotives, which evoke an even older era. Take this image of the diminutive 2-4-0 tank engine Seaham with its driver and fireman on the footplate, and two other smartly dressed men (inspectors?) standing alongside. The crew were protected by what looks like a crude metal cover, which was replaced with a more conventional roof when the engine was rebuilt by the GWR in the early 1920s. It was over 80 years old when it was finally scrapped by British Railways.

The Cambrian was a proudly Welsh company, yet it was happy to base its headquarters and works at Oswestry, just over the English border. Cambrian Railways Gallery includes a series of photos of Oswestry Works, giving us a tantalising glimpse of the lives of the men who served this idiosyncratic railway. One shot struck me: a group of Cambrian loco fitters and apprentices, posing in front of an engine beside the works, in 1910. Little did those men realise how brutally the world was about to change, with the Great War breaking out just four years later. Many would have volunteered, their lives shattered in the murderous mud of Flanders or Gallipoli.

The Cambrian’s English section is long gone, and today’s trains from England to the Cambrian coast join the old Cambrian at Buttington, near Welshpool. The old Oswestry Works survives to house a health centre and antiques emporium. (Maidment and Carpenter explain how former fireman Brian Rowe helped save the impressive station building from becoming a Tesco supermarket with the help of local entrepreneur Roland Pilstock.)

The Cambrian was much more than a line to the coast. Maidment and Carpenter show a very different aspect of the company, long since lost to the transport tides of change. They include a number of delightful views of tiny engines pulling ancient four-wheel carriages on the Tanat Valley line, a light railway that crossed the border into Wales before winding its way slowly along the valley to the foot of the Berwyn Mountains at Llangynog in Powys. But the line was also worked by the GWR’s venerable 19th century Dean Goods 0-6-0, seen above on a ballast train in the early 1950s, and similar former Cambrian engines. The valley featured a number of quarries but they weren’t prolific enough to make the line profitable. It closed in 1960, just before the Beeching axe. Cambrian Railways Gallery also documents the company’s other lost limbs, such as the Kerry branch from Abermule and the far longer Mid Wales Railway along the Wye that sent Cambrian trains to Brecon and Hay.

But let’s return to the coast, the Cambrian’s enduring crown. There are very few lines in Britain that match this precious thread along the Welsh coast. It survived Beeching and fears over the survival of Barmouth Bridge in the 1980s. The 1930s shelter at Friog continues to protect trains from rock falls, and passengers still wait for trains on the lonely platforms at Dovey Junction and Morfa Mawddach, the former Barmouth Junction, which lost its other line to Dolgellau in 1965.

The Cambrian built this line along the Mawddach to Dolgellau to try to block the GWR from reaching the coast, after the larger company had reached that town from Ruabon on the English border. Last week, I stayed at the George III pub at Penmaenpool, where trains used to stop beside the toll bridge over the river. The trackbed is now the Mawddach Trail for walkers and cyclists. Outside the pub, two old railway signals stand guard, daring me not to pass as I started a 35 mile bike ride along the trail and around Cadair Idris.

From Cambrian to GWR – and gŵr…

When the Great Western took over the Cambrian in 1922 (a year before most of the Grouping changes), its Welsh workers started wearing the uniform of the bigger company. Welsh speakers were amused to see teenage boys wearing caps with the letters GWR. The Welsh word gŵr means man, husband or head of a household, which seemed out of place when displayed on a spotty youth. That cap features in a famous Welsh newspaper cartoon celebrating the GWR’s survival through the grouping.

The workers’ stories

I’ll end this post with some reflections on the personal stories that feature in Cambrian Railways Gallery. All too often, railway writers write lovingly about a railway’s locos, stations and viaducts, but neglect the human side. Maidment and Carpenter strike a better balance, with some moving stories of the men who kept the Cambrian running in GWR and BR days. Take Brian Rowe, an Oswestry fireman from 1952 to 1964, who recalls the human cost. In the cruel winter of 1963, his friend ‘Tip’ Dyke was driving a GWR engine tender first late at night with temperatures well below freezing. When he finished his shift at Oswestry at 4am, he was so cold he had to be carried off the engine. (As a man in his sixties, Tip suffered more from the arctic cold than his younger fireman.) Soon after, he suffered a massive stroke that left him paralysed and unable to speak. Such were the dangers that those selfless men endured to keep the railway moving during the coldest winter for 200 years. And while enthusiasts still rave about GWR locomotives, Sidney Lloyd, a man who joined the GWR at Machynlleth in 1938, fondly remembered the 1950s British Railways standard engines as a step up in crew comfort – you could drive them sitting down.

Cambrian Railways Gallery gave me new insights into this remarkable Welsh railway, while inspiring me to plan my long overdue first ride along that breathtaking coast line.

Disclosure

I’d like to thank Matthew Potts at Pen & Sword Books for kindly sending me a copy of Cambrian Railways Gallery to enable me to research this blogpost. Thanks also to authors David Maidment and Paul Carpenter for allowing me to include several photos from the book, including Andrew Dyke’s colourised images, in this post.