Ffestiniog Railway No. 9 “Taliesin”

In 1876, Vulcan Foundry built a Single Fairlie locomotive for the narrow gauge Ffestiniog Railway. It was designed by G.P. Spooner and had two two-axle bogies, of which the leading one was powered. The locomotive received the number 9 and was named “Taliesin” after a 6^th century Welsh poet. The driving wheels had a diameter of two feet and eight inches and the cylinders measured 9 by 14 inches. The rated haulage capacity of the locomotive was 40 tons at 14 mph on an incline of 1 in 80 or 1.25 percent. Later it was renumbered to 7.

In 1900, it was rebuilt with a new boiler and a closed cab. Additionally, the water capacity was increased from 380 to 430 gallons. Now the locomotive weighed 17 instead of 15 tons. When the new boiler had to be replaced in 1924, the railway did not grant the costs of a new boiler. So “Taliesin” was used for light work for some years and finally disassembled in 1935. Many decades later, the shops at Boston Lodge used the remains of this locomotive to build a replica and completed the work in 1999. Technically this was not a new locomotive, but a rebuild with a new boiler. Since 2011, it is being operated with a boiler pressure of 200 psi.