NEWS UPDATE No. 123
Although one might think that life on the railway gets a bit quieter after the end of the summer holidays, this September has proved to a particularly busy period, with a spell of nice weather at the start bringing a goodly flow of visitors.
The model railway show weekend in the middle of the month included the operation an enhanced timetable as well as a connecting shuttle bus to and from the event.
A headache faced General Manager David Jones recently when Welsh Water decided to dig up the road through Llanuwchllyn village, shutting it to all traffic for a couple of days. 
Passengers arriving by car had to divert around the lake via Bala and Llangower, while coach access to the station was cut off completely. Who knows what the fire brigade would have done in an emergency as the diversionary route was unsuitable for a fire tender, due to the weight restriction on the narrow bridge at Llangower.
Despite this inconvenience putting off passengers and some distinctly unfavourable weather throughout most of the remainder of the month, the railway still recorded its third busiest September on record, with just 4% fewer passengers than last year.
Model Railway Show another great success
This year’s Model Railway Show at Bala’s Ysgol Godre’r Berwyn on September 16th and 17th was excellent event, co-ordinated for the railway by BLRS Secretary Mat Peacock and a small team of helpers.
There were no fewer than 30 layouts on display, in almost every scale from T gauge up to 16 mm live steam, with Mat calculating that these amounted to more than 2,200 square feet. The show was also attended by eight traders, while both the BLRS and the Maid Marian Loco Fund had sales stands. The railway company also had a stand selling models from the Llanuwchllyn shop, which saw a healthy turnover thanks to some special show discounts.
Attendance was up by a healthy 28% on 2022, despite concerns about potential conflicts with other events such as the OO9 Association 50th anniversary at Statfold Barn, the Welsh Highland Railway Members' weekend and the Severn Valley Railway Gala, not to mention other shows at Redditch, Lichfield and Blackpool. Takings in the show cafe were also up significantly on last year, which Mat suggests may have been the result of having a large layout there to lure people in.
Among the Society layouts on display was a model of Port Dinorwic built by Great Model Railway Challenge judge Kathy Millatt, which was being operated by BLRS Chairman Tim Williams alongside his own slate quarry layout Chwarel Cwm Bach 2.0, while Norman Cooper was showing the somewhat larger model of Porth Penrhyn, built by the Caernarfon club about 20 years ago and acquired a few years back. Mat had brought his finely detailed model of Llangower, although only as a static diorama as he was a bit too busy running the show.
One of the undoubted highlights was the 2 mm fine-scale model of the GWR’s Drws-y-Nant station, brought from deepest Sussex by its creator Nigel Ashton. Former signalman and past railway director John Roberts, who had worked at the station and helped with some of the painstaking research, ‘really lit up’ when he saw the resulting finely detailed model, although he still took the opportunity to suggest further enhancements. Various relics from the station appeared with the layout over the two days, including a couple of Llanuwchllyn – Drws-y-Nant key tokens, a finial from the signalbox, and some brass nameplates. One notable visitor was an elderly lady who had been born in the station house, along with members of her family which still own the building, having bought it from BR. Another visitor reminisced about the unloading of churns for the nearby creamery, which brought an immediate addition to the layout.
Nigel commented that he and his co-operator Michael agreed that they would ‘never have another show quite like this one’, given the number of positive comments and suggestions for further enhancements. ‘We learned stuff while giving folk a good representation of how things used to be. We probably ran fewer trains, simply due to discussing the layout itself. We genuinely felt a lot of appreciation coming from local people and we would not have got that anywhere else.’
Stretching the available volunteers to the limit, the railway was also running a variant of its two-train Pink timetable, with regular departures for much of the day.
A vintage Crossville single-deck bus service shuttled to and from the school, enabling visitors to combine their time at the exhibition with a trip on the train.
Here's a great video of the Bala Model Railway Show taken by Enwin’s 3D Models.
Golden Jubilee President’s Appeal
This year marks the Golden Jubilee of the Bala Lake Railway Society (Cymdeithas Rheilffordd Llyn Tegid), which was founded in 1973 at the request of the railway company to focus the efforts of both volunteers and supporters. To mark the occasion, the Society has launched a Golden Jubilee appeal, which was kicked off by its President (and first Chairman) Peter Miller over the August bank holiday weekend.
The society is looking to raise £10,000 to fund the long-term development of the railway’s signalling systems, including much-needed refurbishment work, recommissioning of the signals at Llangower and the procurement of signalling for Penybont and Bala Town ready for the extension of the railway to Bala. Having the funds to hand will allow equipment such as token machines to be purchased as and when they become available.
As Peter explained, ‘it is a significant sum of money, but if we can raise it over the next few years we can help to ensure that the Bala Lake Railway has a heritage signalling system of which we can all be proud’.
Support the Golden Jubilee Appeal at: https://justgiving.com/crowdfunding/BLRS-Jubilee or send a cheque to the railway made payable to Bala Lake Railway Society.
Meanwhile, autumn engineering work is already getting underway. One major project has been to repair the invert under the two-span river bridge at Llangower, where the concrete has been breaking up for many years. Chief Engineer Rob Houghton and his small team built a cofferdam from temporary shuttering attached to the lengths of rail used as reinforcing when the bridge was repaired in standard gauge days. Then on the Friday before the model show, when no trains were running, a contractor delivered 6 cubic metres of concrete to the car park at Llangower station. This was then pumped into skip wagons to be taken along the line and poured into place using a home-made chute. One side of the invert was tackled and left for to set for a couple of weeks, with the other side to be laid in due course.
Special events coming up
Regular weekday services on the railway finish at the end of September, but trains are still running on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays through October, with a full service for the autumn half term period of October 21st -29th (except Friday 27th).
Bookings are now open for our popular Halloween trains on October 28th and 31st, which will be followed by the usual Santa Specials on December 9th and 10th.
For more details take a look at our events page at https://bala-lake-railway.co.uk/events/
Bala Extension Progress
The Bala Lake Railway Trust continues to make progress with the extension project, and has recently seen its biggest breakthrough so far on the issues that led to the earlier planning refusal. Readers may recall that the primary reason for the refusal in April was that the River Dee Special Area of Conservation was failing its phosphate targets, not locally but further downstream between Corwen and Chirk. So any potential increase in phosphates that additional visitors might create when using toilets in the Bala area would be deemed unacceptable.
In July, Natural Resources Wales announced that they had modelled the river flows and phosphate input into the Dee, and had issued permits for each Wastewater Treatment Works along the river. At the end of September Dŵr Cymru / Welsh Water was able to inform the Trust that the Bala WwTW is actually performing better than the limits set in its phosphate permit. That means that any additional phosphate created by the projected increase in visitors to Bala generated by the extension of the railway could be accommodated within those limits. This is a significant step forward and a big hurdle crossed.
Work continues to address the other issues raised by the planning committee, and more information about progress with those points can be found on the Trust website: https://www.balalakerailwaytrust.org.uk
However, the ongoing surveys and the other work necessary to demonstrate that the railway’s plans comply with planning requirements are putting a heavy drain on the Trust’s resources. Your generous donations and recent fund-raising activities have taken the amount raised by the Trust in its ‘fighting fund’ appeal to almost 75% of its £100,000 target. We are nearly there on most issues, but we still need your help with one final push to get the appeal over the line, so that the Trust can submit its revised application before the end of the year. You can donate at: https://www.balalakerailwaytrust.org.uk/donate