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Little Giants: A History of the Ffestiniog Railway's Pre-Revival Locomotives

Little Giants: A History of the Ffestiniog Railway's Pre-Revival Locomotives
Their Mentors, Manufacture and Maintenance

Chris Jones and Peter Dennis

592 pages. 275x215mm. Printed on gloss art paper, casebound with printed board covers.

ISBN13 : 9781911038436

£60.00

This new study of the Ffestiniog Railway’s locomotives takes advantage of on-line newspaper records and the recent cataloguing of the Ffestiniog’s own archives to produce an authoritative record of not only the technical evolution of the engines but also the lives and interactions of the colourful characters involved with them.
Access to the railway’s vast collection of photographs, documents, letters and drawings has enabled a highly detailed picture of the history to be drawn. Many of these records are included in the text to help tell the locomotives’ story and that of the social history surrounding their evolution and operation. Covered for the first time is the ‘business networking’ of Victorian railway engineers and its role in the development of the locomotives and their influence on many other lines worldwide. Archive research has also been used to shed light on the lives of those who worked on the footplate. The railway was extensively photographed and this book reproduces the best of those images at a large size, commensurate with their quality.
The book covers the period of operation from the earliest horse-drawn days until temporary closure in 1946. This has been done in strictly chronological order, allowing the reader to see when and why key decisions were made. The railway’s extensive locomotive maintenance records have been exploited to give a more detailed picture than has previously been published, illustrating the engines’ development, operation and decline over the period.
The authors are both long-term volunteers on the railway and members of the Ffestiniog Railway Heritage Group. Peter was also on the permanent staff for fifteen years.
With a Foreword by Jon Whalley, Chief Mechanical Engineer, Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways

Little Giants: A History of the Ffestiniog Railway's Pre-Revival Locomotives - Sample Images

sample book illustration
A view of Welsh Pony in its famous ‘blue’ livery in 1933, shunting in the GWR yard at Blaenau. G.H. Jones is in the cab and Will Davies in the tender. It now has been fitted with new tyres and has regained the small whistle. It has, however, lost the tank filler lid! F.C. Carrier, C.M. Whitehouse collection
sample book illustration
A view in the early days of the WHR circa 1924. Merddin Emrys is about to set off for Portmadoc New station. The power bogies are those from Livingston Thompson. The carriages in this rake are all to the FR loading gauge. The fireman is Will R. Williams. Photochrom, Eifion Williams collection