The Snowdon Mountain Railway (SMR) (Welsh: Rheilffordd yr Wyddfa) is a narrow gauge rack and pinion mountain railway in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. It is a tourist railway that travels for 4.7 miles (7.6 km) from Llanberis to the summit of Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales.
The SMR is the only public rack and pinion railway in the United Kingdom, and after more than 100 years of operation it remains a popular tourist attraction. The line is owned and operated by Heritage Great Britain plc, operators of several other tourist attractions in the United Kingdom.
The railway is operated in some of the harshest weather conditions in Britain, with services curtailed from reaching the summit in bad weather and remaining closed during the winter from November to mid-March. Single carriage trains are pushed up the mountain by either steam locomotives or diesel locomotives. It has also previously used diesel railcars as multiple units.
The SMR was the inspiration for the fictional Culdee Fell Railway, appearing in the story book "Mountain Engines", part of the "The Railway Series" written by the late Reverend W. Awdry. The Railway Series books were the basis for the popular Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends children's television series; as yet however the Culdee Fell Railway has not been included in the televised episodes (though the major characters do have toys based on them).
Read more about Snowdon Mountain Railway: Route, Operation, Rack Railway, Rolling Stock, Liveries
Famous quotes containing the words mountain and/or railway:
“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)