Dolgarrog railway station is an unstaffed halt, and a

request stop In public transport, a request stop, flag stop, or whistle stop is a bus stop, stop or train station, station at which buses or trains, respectively, stop only on request; that is, only if there are passengers or freight to be picked up or drop ...

, on the Conwy Valley Line from

Llandudno Junction Llandudno Junction (), once known as Tremarl, is a town in the Community (Wales), community of Conwy in Conwy County Borough, Wales. Llandudno Junction and neighbouring Deganwy are both part of the built-up area and community of Conwy. It take ...

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 12,0 ...

. The station is located on the east bank of the

River Conwy The River Conwy (; ) is a river in north Wales. From its source to its discharge in Conwy Bay it is long and drains an area of 678 square km. "Conwy" was formerly anglicised as "Conway." The name 'Conwy' derives from the old Welsh words ''c ...

just across the A470 road from Plas Maenan, which was the home of Henry Jack, the managing director of the Aluminium Corporation from 1916 to 1927, together with its associated enterprises including the

Ffestiniog Railway The Ffestiniog Railway () is a heritage railway based on Narrow-gauge railway, narrow-gauge, located in Gwynedd, Wales. It is a major tourist attraction located mainly within the Snowdonia#Snowdonia National Park, Snowdonia National Park. The ...

and the

Welsh Highland Railway The Welsh Highland Railway (WHR; ) is a restored Narrow-gauge railway, narrow-gauge heritage railway in the Welsh county of Gwynedd. It runs from Caernarfon to Porthmadog, and passes through a number of popular tourist destinations includi ...

. Plas Maenan is now a small country house hotel and restaurant with views across the valley.

History

The station was built by the

LNWR The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the LNWR was the largest joint stock company in the world. Dubbed the "Premier Line", the LNWR's main line connec ...

in 1916 to provide sidings and an interchange facility with the Dolgarrog Railway, a short-standard gauge industrial line, built by the Aluminium Corporation to serve

Dolgarrog Dolgarrog is a village and community (Wales), community in Conwy County Borough, in Wales, situated between Llanrwst and Conwy, very close to the Conwy River. The village is well known for its industrial history since the 18th century an ...

village and the aluminium works that are about a mile from the station on the west bank of the river. The aluminium works closed in 2007, and became the site of

Adventure Parc Snowdonia Adventure Parc Snowdonia, formerly Surf Snowdonia, was an adventure park and tourist attraction, incorporating an artificial wave pool, at Dolgarrog in the Conwy valley, north Wales, owned by Conwy Adventure Leisure Ltd. It was the world's fir ...

, an inland surfing lagoon and adventure park, which itself closed in 2023. The industrial line crossed the river by a substantial girder bridge. The bridge, long used as a footbridge, and the only way to reach the station from the village of Dolgarrog, is now slated for closure. It was initially equipped with two locomotives, ten 12 ton wagons, and two passenger carriages. Morning and evening passenger services were free and operated from 1917 to 1932. Goods traffic, which was heavy during the war, continued but declined in the 1950s. The line closed in 1960 and was lifted in 1964. PlasMaenan5103029X

The station was closed on 2 November 1964 but was reopened on 14 June 1965.

Facilities

The station is unstaffed and has a single platform, with basic amenities only (waiting shelter and timetable poster board). It also has a digital CIS display like other stations on the branch. Access to the platform is via a foot crossing and path from the A470 road.

Usage

The station became the least used station in Wales for the period 2017–18, mainly due to Sugar Loaf station increasing its usage by more than sevenfold from the previous year. The previous low usage for Sugar Loaf, 228 passengers for 2016–17, seems to have made it popular. It saw over 1,800 passengers for 2017–18, whilst Dolgarrog saw a fall of almost 40% passenger usage to 612.

Services

Transport for Wales Rail Transport for Wales Rail Limited, branded as Transport for Wales and TfW Rail ( and ), is a Welsh State-owned enterprises of the United Kingdom, publicly owned train operating company, a subsidiary of Transport for Wales (TfW), a Welsh Governme ...

operates five southbound and six northbound trains that call on request Mon-Sat (approximately every three hours), with three trains each way on Sundays between May and early September. Following serious flood damage to the line in multiple locations in March 2019, services from this station were suspended for four months and replaced by buses whilst major infrastructure repairs were carried out. Dolgarrog was one of two stations severely damaged by the floodwaters. The damaged platform was removed and the line reopened to traffic on 18 July 2019, but with Dolgarrog station remaining closed. On 22 November 2019 the line closed again for three weeks for a new platform to be built at Dolgarrog and rock bolts to be installed in Ffestiniog Tunnel, reopening on 15 December. Further damage to the line occurred in February 2020, this time by

Storm Ciara Storm Ciara was a powerful and long-lived extratropical cyclone that was the first of a pair of European windstorms to affect the United Kingdom and Ireland at peak intensity less than a week apart in early February 2020, followed by Storm Den ...

with services again being suspended until the line was reopened on 28 September 2020.

References

External links