The Challenge
The challenge on the FR was to move slate from an elevated location to a harbour for shipping, in this case from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog, Wales. In 2006 this is a 28 minute drive over 11.9 miles (19.1 kilometers), but in 1832 it was a remote mountain area. The railway was laid on an average grade of about 1 in 80. Trains running downhill were powered by gravity, with 3 stops. The total journey time was about an hour and a half. Trains were moved uphill by horses until 1863, the journey taking almost 6 hours. It was therefore necessary to find a way to bring the horses back down again.
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Famous quotes containing the word challenge:
“The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“...Women’s Studies can amount simply to compensatory history; too often they fail to challenge the intellectual and political structures that must be challenged if women as a group are ever to come into collective, nonexclusionary freedom.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)