Schoolboy's ambitious bid to relaunch historic railway line

A railway line in a part of Wales connected communities for more than 100 years before it was shut completely in the 1960s. Now, a campaign is being launched to bring it back. Robert Harries reports

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A WELSH schoolboy is launching an ambitious bid to bring back a historic railway line that once connected communities in a part of Wales for more than 100 years.

The main line of the Caernarfonshire Railway opened on July 29, 1862, with services travelling north and south along a track in northwest Wales ferrying passengers between Bangor and Afon Wen.

After operating for more than a century, the line was a victim of the so-called Beeching cuts of the 1960s.

Dr Richard Beeching, who was chair of the British Railways Board, wrote two reports that served as guidelines on how to reshape and restructure the nationalised railway system across the UK.

The cuts were not popular in Wales as they made rail transport more difficult for passengers - a legacy that still lasts today.

Key routes linking east with west and north with south were gone within the space of a couple of years with many saying that Dr Beeching's methods were akin to "taking an axe to the British rail system".

One of the lines that bit the Beeching dust was the Caernarfonshire Railway - then called the Carnarvonshire Railway - which was shut completely in the run-up to Christmas 1964, just over 102 years since it opened.

Now, more than 60 years after that closure, a teenager has started a campaign to drum up enough support to reopen the historic railway line so that communities in his local area can once again be connected by rail.

Morgan Mace, 15, goes to Ysgol Dyffryn Nantlle in Penygroes, Gwynedd. He lives in the village of Carmel - a short distance from where trains would once hurtle past along the railway line he wants to see brought back to life.

"I'm proud to be from north Wales and that's why this project means so much - it's about giving something back to our communities," said Morgan. "The line was closed in December 1964 during the Beeching cuts so it's been shut for over 60 years.