Welsh Highland Railway Restoration - Controversy and Complication

Controversy and Complication

In order to begin the restoration of the line, WHR Ltd (or any other organisation so interested) needed to gain access to the track bed . The 1964 Co started negotiations with the liquidator and the local authorities to find a way forward. The original company, which held the statutory powers to run the railway and which still owned the trackbed had a complex legal status as it had no directors or officers who could act for it. During the negotiations, during which a price (£750) and contract had been agreed, but the liquidator died before the contract was signed and the assets passed to the Official Receiver (OR).

It was not always understood that the statutory nature of the railway meant that it could not be sold off piecemeal and that either an abandonment order (which extinguished the statutory powers that the trackbed enjoyed) or a transfer order (which transferred those powers to a new company - strictly only another railway company) were the only ways that the trackbed could be released. Despite this, some parts of the trackbed were sold (notably at Dinas and Rhyd Ddu) by the liquidator and claims for adverse possession were also numerous (an example being Snowdon Ranger station building). For many years, the OR demanded (following legal advice) that any purchaser of the assets must first be able to take on the liabilities of owning the trackbed (claims, fencing, etc.) and secondly must apply for an abandonment order, even if they then wished to restore the railway! The mechanism of using a transfer order was not always well understood and became important later at the High Court hearing.

After the 1944 winding up, the liquidator and, later, the OR were mostly interested in obtaining the best deal for the debenture holders, who had large debts incurred in funding the 1922/3 railway. Peter Johnson, author of numerous WHR books, notes that "The debentures were not actually secured and, in 1923, the local authorities made the WHR agree to be party to a mortgage deed defining the terms of interest and principal repayment."

The OR believed that the best deal would be for the trackbed to be sold off in one piece and any resulting funds would then be distributed amongst the creditors, chief of whom were the debenture holders. This placed the debenture holders in a strong position. Following council boundary changes, the main debenture holders were the Department of Transport (some 42%), CCC (later Gwynedd CC) 17.7%, Merioneth DC 3.5%, Dwyfor DC 13%, McAlpines 11.8%, Branch Nominees Ltd 11.7% with 0.1% thought untraceable through a Mrs Conbran/Sir John Stewart.

In addition to the likely 'loss' of this substantial capital, Gwynedd County Council (GCC) (successor to Caernarfonshire County Council from 1974) claimed it had run up costs maintaining the railway's structures since the railway closed. However it was discovered later that the council had in 1934 agreed to adopt the structures (bridges) and pay for maintenance itself; this was recorded in signed minutes. Therefore their claim to the OR for these costs was out of order. Had the OR known this at the time, it may have been possible to persuade the OR to sell the trackbed to a party other than the county council. On the restored railway, two or three overbridges have been rebuilt by the county council on this basis - the county council had adopted the bridges and it was not for the WHR company (old or new) to pay for their upkeep or renewal.

Of the shares in the 1922 company, some 88.4% were known to have been held by H. J. Jack and passed thus to his successors.

During the early years of negotiations with the OR, the sometimes fleeting interest of outsiders (a couple of parties wishing to build miniature railways on the trackbed), cycling and walking charities who wished to open up the trackbed as a footpath/cycleway and Caernarvonshire County Council's own surveyors (who listed some 15 points where road improvements would affect the railway) hampered progress. However, the establishment of Beddgelert Siding as a base in Porthmadog and an important decision at a local Public Inquiry to ensure that the restoration of the railway to Pont Croesor from Porthmadog was included in the Local Plan, eventually brought some progress.

Peter Johnson again notes: "There might have been a window where the county council could have got an abandonment order using the 1962 Transport Act in the 1960s; the cost would have been less than £5,000, probably quite a lot less. On reflection, I suspect that its problem was that it could not really demonstrate that acquiring 'all' of the trackbed was within its statutory purposes and justify any expenditure on it. If it was determined, it could have done it."

In the late 1980s, WHLR (1964) Ltd and GCC began a project to gain joint control of the trackbed and to begin rebuilding the railway in stages. The scheme involved GCC receiving ownership for a nominal sum (£1, as it claimed it was still owed a lot of money) and then leasing parts of it back to WHLR (1964) Ltd. Various plans were put together and various starting points were discussed, including Rhyd Ddu, Beddgelert (Some work was started in the late 1970s to facilitate clearance of the flooded Royal Goat hotel cutting. This utilised rail recovered from the abandoned Croesor Tramway.). Eventually they settled on rebuilding the WHR from Porthmadog to "a convenient point between Beddgelert and Rhyd Ddu".

It was the stated intention of GCC and a requirement of the OR, however, to apply for an abandonment order, which would have removed the statutory designation of the track bed as a railway and consequently, the council might then have decided to use the parts not leased to the '64 Co. for non-railway purposes, such as the much talked-about footpaths or road improvement/bypass schemes. Other issues were claims for adverse possession ('squatters' rights') of the land, which would have been numerous and practically impossible to fight had an abandonment order been made.

One issue was a road improvement scheme at Waunfawr which was proposed to sever the trackbed, with any prospective restorer of the line having to pay for a bridge. This scheme and many of the others mooted never came to pass.

The risk that GCC would not open all of the track bed for railway restoration and that a substantial amount of it could therefore be lost to footpaths, adverse possession, or road schemes led a group called Trackbed Consolidation Limited (TCL) to be formed in 1983, mostly from WHR (1964) Co members and directors to consider other methods for reopening as much of the railway as possible. This caused division, recriminations and even suspensions of some directors of TCL from the 1964 Co as a struggle ensued between the directors of the 1964 Co who were tied to their agreement with GCC and those of the TCL persuasion who were greatly concerned by the long term effects of that deal.