Dinas station was built by the
Festiniog Railway
The Ffestiniog Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Ffestiniog) is a heritage railway based on narrow-gauge, located in Gwynedd, Wales. It is a major tourist attraction located mainly within the Snowdonia National Park.
The railway is roughly long an ...
(FR). It was the first passenger station in
Blaenau Ffestiniog
Blaenau Ffestiniog is a town in Gwynedd, Wales. Once a slate mining centre in historic Merionethshire, it now relies much on tourists, drawn for instance to the Ffestiniog Railway and Llechwedd Slate Caverns. It reached a population of 12,00 ...
, then in
Merionethshire, now in
Gwynedd
Gwynedd (; ) is a county and preserved county (latter with differing boundaries; includes the Isle of Anglesey) in the north-west of Wales. It shares borders with Powys, Conwy County Borough, Denbighshire, Anglesey over the Menai Strait, and C ...
, Wales. This station is not to be confused with some miles distant on the
Welsh Highland Railway; nor is it to be confused with the
Festiniog and Blaenau Railway
The Festiniog & Blaenau Railway (F&BR) was a narrow gauge railway built in 1868 to connect the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog in Wales with the slate quarries around Tanymanod and the village of Llan Ffestiniog, to the south. At Blaenau Ffesti ...
's northern terminus in the centre of Blaenau Ffestiniog which was sometimes referred to colloquially as "Dinas".
Context
The
evolution of Blaenau's passenger stations was complex, with five different railway companies providing services to the area.
Opening
The station opened on 6 January 1865, carrying passengers to
Portmadoc and points between. This was the first steam-hauled passenger service in Britain to use tracks of less than
Standard Gauge
A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...
, with the line carrying a quarter of a million people in its first year of operation. The station's first stationmaster was Mr John Lloyd, the initial service was five trains to and from Portmadoc each day except Sunday.
Location
The station was built among existing slate workings which had been rail-served for some years. The original route to the station and nearby workings was to be buried under slate waste from around 1900, but the railway still needed to access quarries near the former station, so a replacement branch was built from Glan-y-Pwll, allowing the original line to be buried.
The station building was joined to Dinas
engine shed which long outlived the station, finally closing in 1900, when it was replaced by a new building at Glan-y-Pwll. The original shed housed the railway's "Top Shunter", a locomotive long given to providing unofficial services to lineside dwellings.
Closure
In 1866 the FR opened Dinas Junction, from which its new "Branch Line" (the original line to Dinas being the "Main Line") ran to the new station nearer to the centre of the town. Trains from Portmadoc alternated between the two stations,
but Duffws was better sited for passenger traffic, so Dinas closed in 1870. Slate traffic to the Dinas station area nevertheless continued well into the 20th Century.
Modern times
The station was eventually covered by slate waste, under which it is now completely buried.
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{{Closed stations Gwynedd
Disused railway stations in Gwynedd
Ffestiniog Railway
Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1865
Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1870