Qualla: Carnarvon Castle Railway Station

Carnarvon Castle Railway Station: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RevDave, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first public railway in North Wales did not have a locomotive. It had horses - sometimes two, sometimes more - hauling slate wagons nine miles down a gentle gradient from the quarries near Nantlle to the harbour at Caernarfon. It opened on 12 July 1828, three years after the Stockton and Darlington and three years before the Liverpool and Manchester. For 28 years it carried only slate. Then, in 1856, somebody decided to add passengers, and the small wooden Booking Office near Caernarfon harbour - alongside what would become known as Carnarvon Castle station - started selling shillings-and-sixpence tickets to Nantlle.

Image: RevDave | CC BY-SA 3.0

Carnarvon Castle Railway Station: A Station Without a Platform

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Carnarvon Castle was a railway terminus in name only. There was no platform. There was no station siding. Passengers boarded from and alighted onto the trackside, and the train - the 'usual open passenger truck and a closed or first class carriage drawn by two horses', as one 186...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Carnarvon Castle Railway Station: Slate Was the Real Business

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC0. Passenger revenue was a useful sideline - more than a quarter of total income in 1862 - but the Nantlle Railway always made its money from slate. Roof slates from the quarries near Nantlle came down to the quay in horse-drawn wagons, were loaded onto ships, and went out to roof L...

Image: CC0

Carnarvon Castle Railway Station: The Standard Gauge Sweeps It Away

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. By the 1860s the standard-gauge Carnarvonshire Railway was being built through the same valleys, and its northern section between Penygroes and Coed Helen - just south of Caernarfon - would obliterate the Nantlle Railway's tracks. The passenger service ended on 12 June 1865. Slat...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Carnarvon Castle Railway Station: What Remains

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Cliff, CC BY 2.0. There is almost nothing left of Carnarvon Castle station to see. The harbour area has been redeveloped repeatedly; the line's path through the lower town vanished into the standard-gauge layout in the 1870s and then into modern road works. The most northerly visible piece of the ...

Image: Nigel Cliff | CC BY 2.0