News from the Bala Lake Railway
January has been a decidedly busy month (witness one of our biggest news pages to date) with much activity on the boiler front plus fevered progress on track relaying and maintenance. The Wednesday Gang and the Working Weekend/Week, which started on the 19th, produced a remarkable amount of work carried…
To the unsuspecting, December might be thought to be a very quiet month, but as always on the BLR, a vast amount of activity takes place in the ‘closed season’, so here is a sample of what has been happening behind the scenes. Boilers are in the news again, with…
Bearing in mind the BLR has only three full-time staff, we are indebted to our loyal band of volunteers who achieve so much and in all weathers, as you will read. Throughout all this, the humour persists, as does the large amount of tea and flapjacks consumed. What follows is…
At the risk of sounding repetitive, the Bala Lake Railway has yet again broken records for passenger numbers, with the October figures being up on last year by no less than 14% and the total for the year to date showing an increase of nearly 6%. Indeed, on Saturday 27th,…
It is almost to the point of repetition, but September passenger numbers were up by no less than 13% on last year, and that in spite of some inconsistent weather during the month. But what really made the month stand out was the last weekend’s operations where passengers decided to…
August was predictably another good month for the railway and, in spite of soaring temperatures in most parts of the UK, a certain amount of ‘liquid sunshine’ appeared, noticeably in the middle of our Bank Holiday Mini Gala. However, this did nothing to dampen the occasion and passenger numbers were…
July 2018 Update We started July on a very sad note when we learned of the death of Wendy Levy who had been suffering the horrible effects of a brain tumour for over a year. Wendy and her husband, Martin, who is a director of the BLR, were, for years,…
It started with an innocuous dinner in a delightful restaurant in Bala High Street called Y Cyfnod, named after the newspaper which was published at that address. Being the sort of town where a lot of people are known socially because of their achievements and occupations, this dinner was deliciously…
May was a good month for the railway, a very good month. Our numbers were up by 20% over May last year, and we are now virtually level-pegging for the year with our best ever in 2017. This has been helped by two busy Bank Holidays in the month as…
As we mentioned last month, the Easter break, being a moving feast from one year to the next, has a big impact on travelling numbers at the start of the season and makes planning even more difficult. An early Easter straddling the end of March and early April is never…
