Welshpool and Llanfair Railway in the town 1964

Image: © Richard Bird Taken: 3 Aug 1964

The track of the narrow gauge railway followed the course of a horse tramway through the town, the latter once serving the Stondart Quarry. When the later steam railway was constructed it attained the lower terminus by the same sinuous route, eventually reaching a wharf on the Shropshire Union canal. Its course included a traverse of public roadways, at which point trains were escorted across the highway by an official with warning flags. The situation was akin to a similar course, taken by the long lost Weston, Clevedon and Portishead line which once ran through Somerset, and which also crossed a busy town square. By 1964, the Welshpool and Llanfair's line was disused in the town section, with an eventual terminus at Raven Square (where it still terminates today). The image shows the line before it was lifted, running between housing and which course is now a public roadway. My late father provides the scale.

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