Four decades after taking this circular trip from Birmingham New Street at a cost then of just £5.00, a two-night stay in Shrewsbury made the perfect excuse to spend a full day travelling around North and Mid-Wales using a Ffestiniog Round Robin ticket (now £30.80 with railcard from Shrewsbury), which remains a real bargain when you realise that a single ticket on the famous 13½ mile-long narrow gauge railway costs £24.90.
For those unfamiliar with this ticket, the Round Robin offers a circular journey in either direction from a range of starting points as far afield as Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool (railcard fare £34.70), that encompasses a single narrow-gauge journey between Porthmadog and Blaenau Ffestiniog, along with trips on the scenic Cambrian Coast and Conwy Valley Lines and then travel to or from Llandudno Junction on the North Wales Main Line
When I last visited the Ffestiniog Railway it was to spend an exhausting week in summer 2019 working as a volunteer buffet car steward, and at that time there were up to a dozen full-line round trips each day in high summer, with a typical buffet car duty involving three trips each day from Porthmadog Harbour to Blaenau Ffestiniog and back.
But the Ffestiniog timetable has been drastically re-cast since COVID and what is now called the “base level” timetable only guaranteed three round trips on the day of my Round Robin (19 August 2026), so along with the pretty sparse service on the Conwy Valley Line (one train every three hours) it made planning a viable circular trip extremely challenging.
When I and my late father had done this tour almost exactly 45 years ago (21 August 1981) – then known as a North Wales Circular Day Tour – we had made a clockwise journey, travelling first to Minffordd via Shrewsbury then up to Llandudno Junction after the Ffestiniog journey, before returning to New Street via Chester and Crewe.
After spending a considerable time studying the Cambrian, Ffestiniog and Conwy Valley timetables for my chosen date (19 August 2026) I had concluded that the limited Ffestiniog and Conwy Valley Line services now made it impossible to do a Round Robin in the clockwise direction, so I settled instead for travelling out via the North Wales Main Line, then returning to Shrewsbury from Porthmadog along the Cambrian Coast.
Ever mindful of how one upset could make completing the circuit impossible, I decided to play safe and build in breaks to my times that would allow for any delays or cancellations along the way, as well time for photography and beer! So what would turn out to be a fascinating day of travel lasting over 12 hours began with the 07.27 Transport for Wales (TfW) departure from Shrewsbury for Llandudno Junction.
Train 1W91 is a service from Cardiff Central (05.19) to Holyhead that was formed of one of the ubiquitous Class 197 units (197108) that have taken over a vast swathe of TfW workings and are set to make their debut later this year on Cambrian Coast services between Birmingham International and Aberystwyth/Pwllheli, displacing the Class 158 units that currently operate all services.
Travelling from Shrewsbury via Crewe – the normal route to Chester via Wrexham was closed for engineering work – there is always plenty of heritage rolling stock on view in the LSL yard adjacent to Crewe station, while continuing on towards Chester offers a brief glimpse of the only semaphore signals that this service will pass before reaching the Isle of Anglesey, with the trio controlled by Beeston Castle & Tarporley Signal Box, mid-way between Crewe and Chester.
Once into the Principality, just west of Chester, the North Wales Main Line follows the coastline all the way to Colwyn Bay, with the most notable features, apart from a huge offshore wind farm, being no less than five closed, but Grade II-Listed, signal boxes – Holywell Junction, Mostyn, Rhyl No.1, Rhyl No.2 and Abergele & Pensarn – along with the TSS Duke of Lancaster, a long-abandoned steamship built by Harland & Wolff in 1956 that has been beached near Mostyn for the past 47 years (since 1979), as seen above.
Having an hour to wait at Llandudno Junction before my Conwy Valley train to Blaenau Ffestiniog, I decided to take the short three-mile trip up the branch to Llandudno, to re-acquaint myself with the semaphore signals I had photographed and featured at the seaside terminus in May 2026 and to join the Blaenau Ffestiniog train when it began its journey here at 10.10.
I had been all set for some disappointment at this point, having read a few days earlier that TfW’s severe shortage of serviceable Class 197 units meant replacement buses were covering Conwy Valley services for the whole of this week. But I was delighted and slightly amazed when I spoke to the Booking Clerk at Llandudno station, who told me that the 10.10 train to Blaenau Ffestiniog was running as scheduled, although the replacement bus was also operating to exactly the same timetable!
As I wrote earlier in the year, the Conwy Valley route south from Llandudno Junction owes its survival to the need for a rail link in the early 1960s to a nuclear power station at Trawsfynydd. This led to a link being created at Blaenau Ffestiniog from the branch terminus to the stub of another former branch line that had run from a GWR terminus in the town to Bala Junction, but closed in 1961 when a southern section of the line was flooded to create the Llyn Celyn reservoir.
The Conwy Valley Line is delightfully scenic, initially running on the east side of Conwy estuary, then through the two main settlements along the route – Llanrwst and Betws-y-Coed – and a number of other small villages, before reaching Blaenau Ffestiniog after going through one of the longest railway tunnels in Britain and, at two miles and 333 yards, the UK’s longest single-track rail tunnel.
Its passenger potential was finally realised in 1982 when the re-built narrow gauge Ffestiniog Railway reached to Blaenau Ffestiniog and a new joint station was opened on the site of what had been the town’s GWR terminus (a branch line from Bala). But from my checking of timetables, connections between the six daily Conwy Valley trains and the limited Ffestiniog services are not great.
What seemed to be the only viable connection from a Conwy Valley service on my day of travel (19 August) gave the option of an immediate transfer off the arrival from Llandudno at 11.27 onto a Ffestiniog departure at 11.40, or my preferred option of an hour’s break and travel at 12.45 to reach Porthmadog Harbour at 13.55.
Having not seen rain in the south of England for about two months I was not prepared for the late morning downpour at Blaenau Ffestiniog and got completely soaked after photographing the departure of 197010 on its return working to Llandudno (11.38) as the Ffestiniog Railway’s “Linda” waited alongside to depart with the 11.40 Quarryman to Porthmadog Harbour.
The heavy rain meant missing out on another shot as the FR’s newest loco, Double Fairlie “James Spooner” (built in 2023) arrived shortly afterwards with the Mountain Spirit service that would take me down to Porthmadog. Despite the severe rationalisation of its timetable and the loss of buffet service to all except those prepared to pay an extortionate premium fare, the FR is a still delightful little railway to travel, with very friendly and helpful staff.
Once in Porthmadog there was a chance to capture another of the FR’s double-ended Fairlie locos “David Lloyd George” as it waited to depart with the 14.20 Mountain Spirit service before taking a ten minute walk through the busy town centre, stopping to buy supplies for my final rail journey in a huge Tesco store then heading to the Station Inn on the Cambrian Coast station for a welcome pint of locally-brewed Purple Moose Snowdonia Golden Pale Ale (3.6%/£3.85).
Being heavily delayed on its trip towards Pwllheli 158835 was terminated at Porthmadog and was again inexplicably delayed in departing on its lengthy return trip to Birmingham International (16.01) that was meant to get me back to Shrewsbury in about three and a half hours – we eventually arrived 28 minutes late at 19.47 meaning my 264¼-mile circuit had taken 12 hours and 20 minutes.
For all its delays the busy Cambrian Coast Line is a scenic delight, particularly the section from south of Harlech through Barmouth and over its famous bridge then on to Tywyn and Aberdovey. An added bonus for me was to be sitting opposite a young and knowledgeable bird watcher, who pointed out a pair of ospreys perched on a tall post at the Dyfi Osprey Project near Dovey Junction station.
Not many people seem to know about the Ffestiniog Round Robin ticket, despite it featuring in TfW publicity, and it is something of an endurance test that takes a fair bit of planning. But for anyone looking to get a taste of the magnificent scenery in North and Mid Wales at a truly bargain price then this is a ticket that I can highly recommend.
RailwayWorld.net 
You must be logged in to post a comment.