Glyn Valley Tramway Blog

Glyn Valley Tramway Trust AGM 2008

The Glyn Valley Tramway Trust AGM will be on Saturday 11 October at 5pm followed by the Annual Dinner. More details here.

Slates from Glyn Ceiriog...

The Ceiriog Valley was described by Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, as 'a little bit of heaven on earth', and so it appears to the visitor right up to today. There is little to suggest to the casual onlooker that the valley was once a thriving community of slate, granite, silica, china clay quarries, a gunpowder works and flannel mills, with the Glyn Valley Tramway running along its spine.

Excerpt from 'Slates from Glyn Ceiriog' by John Milner.

Glyn Valley Tramway Trustee and Advisor raising funds for local community

Glyn Valley Tramway Trustee Terry Evans, and Trust legal advisor Ben Williams, have embarked on an epic trek across Europe – and they’ll be covering the 1,500 miles in a ‘banger’ which cost just £90.

Terry, who also represents Chirk South on Wrexham Council, and solicitor Ben, are taking part in the Staples2Naples banger rally to raise money to buy a new minibus for local nursing home, Chirk Court.

Terry and Ben set off from the home on Thursday in a 15-year-old Suzuki Swift which cost just £90. Initially they headed up to Calais, before travelling through Switzerland and Italy, and will (hopefully!) arrive in Naples on September 22.

If anyone would like to sponsor Terry and Ben or make a donation to the Chirk Court Minibus Appeal they should contact the home on 01691 774286.

New appointments keep Glyn Valley Tramway on the right track

 New appointments to the Board of the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust are being welcomed as an excellent step forward in the strategic delivery of one of the most exciting heritage railway developments in Wales.

Councillor Mike Fennell from Chirk Town Council and Councillor Angela James from Glyn Ceiriog Community Council have agreed to the join the board with immediate effect.

“It was the view of the Trustees that the people of Chirk and the Ceiriog Valley must be able to express their opinions and any concerns they may have regarding this exciting project.

By including council representatives we feel this to be the best way to give the communities of the Ceiriog Valley a way of approaching the Board directly, with any concerns or opinions,” said Glyn Valley Tramway Trust Chairman, Mr David Cooper, himself a Councillor on Glyntraian Community Council in the Ceiriog Valley.

The decision of Cllr. James to join the Board is seen as especially important, as she is also a Committee member of the Glyn Valley Tramway Group, who are concentrating their efforts on the Glyn Ceiriog end of the line.

“The restoration of the Tramway is a two way contract between the Trust and those who live in Chirk and the Ceiriog Valley and hat by building these early bridges with the communities, we feel, is the surest way of avoiding the problems that other restoration bodies have encountered,” continued Mr Cooper.

Chirk solicitor Ben Williams has also joined the Board as the Trust’s Legal Officer.

Further appointments are to be announced soon. For more information on the work of the Trust visit ou website at  www.glynvalleytramway.co.uk.

For further information contact Cllr. David Cooper on 01691 718991 oe email david.cooper@glynvalleytramway.co.uk.

Glyn Valley Tramway tender results published

The results of the tender process are now online here.

More support for the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust

The Board of the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust is pleased to announce that it has received a grant of £400.00 from the BE INFORMED FUND, a small grant scheme managed and administered by WCVA (the Wales Council for Voluntary Action) and funded by the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) in Wales.

The grant is to be used by the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust to fund a visit to the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway where the Trust’s representatives will spend two days with officers of the L & B Railway learning of their reasons for converting the L & B Railway into a Community Interest Company, so taking advantage of the recent Government legislation that has brought about this new dimension in charitable management. What is learned from the visit will, it is hoped, enable the representatives to place before the Board a recommendation that the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust, based as it is in a rural community in North East Wales, should also seek to become a Community Interest Company and in so doing be the first Welsh Heritage Railway to convert to this new system of management.

The visit is expected to take place before the end of September with the outcomes being presented to the Trust’s Annual General Meeting in October. At the same time a copy of the their report will be made available to the Wales Council for Voluntary Action, the funders of the visit for their information, to whom the Trustees are greatly indebted for the financial support which has enabled this information seeking visit to take place. For more information on the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust please visit www.glynvalleytramway.co.uk.

New Treasurer sought...

The Glyn Valley Tramway trust are seeking a new Treasurer. This is an ideal opportunity for someone with an accounting background to become involved with the running of the Trust. Visit the main website for more information.

I've dreamt of this for forty years...

“My love of steam engines began when I was at School” says Ben Williams, the well known solicitor in Chirk. At my school in Chirk a steam engine was being used by the builders and I was fascinated. For years I was an onlooker, but in 1977 I became a Life Member of the Llangollen Railway, and became a ganger on the line, laying track and I loved every moment of it. Unfortunately for me, (but probably fortunately for the Llangollen Railway), somebody discovered that I was training to be a solicitor and put an end to my track laying, saying that I was wanted in the office. The upshot was that I became the Llangollen Railway’s ‘Legal Eagle’ and cut my teeth on negotiating their Transport and Works Order, which they needed before they could run a service. At that time it was for Llangollen to Corwen, but the powers that be wanted to terminate it at Glyndyfrdwy, but in the end I managed to negotiate it to Carog. So today it is good to see the Llangollen Railway pushing to Corwen.

“At the back of my house in Chirk there lies the original cutting through which the former Glyn Valley Tramway ran from Chirk to Glyn Ceiriog, and which closed in July 1935. Ever since I have lived in Ty Rriad I have dreamt of those small locomotives running down from Chirk station, and descending through the cutting to Pontfaen and up the valley with their empty wagons, and the coaches full of people returning from Oswestry market on a Wednesday. Or hear a loaded mineral train straining as it pulled a heavy load of granite up Pontfaen Bank, for Chirk, and the empty wagons of the Great Western that stood ready to be loaded.  

“The catalyst came in 2005, when one evening I spotted in a paper an advertisement for a railway for sale. I was captivated. My own railway! For it came as a total package with coaches, engine and track of 2 foot gauge. It had started life at the Stoke Garden Festival, and when that closed it moved to the East Midlands and now was suddenly for sale. Unfortunately I delayed in making a bid, and then it was too late. Now having come that close to seeing my dream of a steam train running once again through the old GVT cutting, I then thought about restoring the old Glyn Valley Tramway.

“With that thought in mind I turned to my old friend Cllr. Terry Evans, the councillor for Chirk (South), whom I have known for 28 years, to see what we could do to bring back to Chirk this wonderful little railway. Having discussed the matter we decided that the first thing we needed was to remove all the trees that had invaded the cutting, so I went out and bought a chain saw. Terry and I worked steadily through the Summer and Autumn of 2006 removing all the trees and undergrowth, so that by the time we had finished, apart from there not being a track, the cutting was starting to look as it once did. Now all we had to do was find track and a locomotive!”

Terry Evans says “In my years as a Borough Councillor, I knew that Chirk needed to broaden the appeal of its tourist economy, for over the years we have seen a long slow decline in general employment and we need to be more self reliant. Then when last April Ben told me he had received a telephone call from David Cooper, now the Chairman of the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust, asking for a meeting to discuss a revival of the Glyn Valley Tramway, I sensed that things might be about to happen. We met David and his colleague Bernard Rockett and talked. This led to a second meeting when David was accompanied by David Dilnot the then Project Manager of the GVT Group, but now a Trustee and Project Manager for the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust. In October of last year the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust was formed as Charity No. 1121437 and things started to happen. Unfortunately there were differences of opinion and those who had formed the Trust, which was to have helped the Group forward, found themselves adrift. The Trustees as I have discovered to my delight are a body of people that believe in getting things done, and so when they came to Chirk and said, “We will rebuild the Glyn Valley Tramway from Chirk to Glyn Ceiriog” I knew they would move Heaven and earth to do just that. Their success would be an enormous economic benefit for Chirk, bringing more visitors to the area, helping to create and sustain jobs and helping Chirk to a brighter future.

“If the World Heritage Site of the Chirk and Pontcysyllte aqueducts is confirmed, then Chirk is in a unique position for not only would it have three major tourist attractions in the town area, but they would be within walking distance of each other! In fact they have a relationship, for it was through the castle grounds that first the canal, then the tramway ran, and at Chirk Station they all came together, with the tramway passing over the canal tunnel and the entrance to Chirk Castle just two minutes up the road. In all of this however, whatever happens in the future Chirk must have pride of place for it was in Chirk that Thomas Telford built the first aqueduct, living in a house which still stands today, just yards away from the railway that came later to supplant the canal. Just up the road from Thomas Telford’s home stands in Castle Road the former council offices, which have been unused for five years. With such a focus on Chirk the office and its adjacent buildings are now essential to Chirk’s future, the more so with the coming of the GVT and the World Heritage Site. Standing so close it can become a real hub for tourism services, with adjacent parking to facilitate our visitors. I have committed myself to the retention and opening of these offices to help strengthen our tourist economy for there will be a real need and what better building is there where so much can come together?

“We are both Life Members and Trustees of the Glyn Valley Tramway Trust, for we see it as a measure of our confidence in its management that we have volunteered to do so. Ben has kindly offered to become the Trust’s Legal Officer whilst I am now the Trust’s Volunteer Liaison Officer. You know that the Welsh Assembly Government and Wrexham County Borough Council have through Northern Marches Cymru granted the Trust a total of £38,500 with which to carry out though consultants a full survey of the line, with a view to it being restored, and the funding of their business plan, with the award of the contracts to be announced on 8th August and work to be completed by 30th November.

“The ability of the Trust’s Board of Management to deliver is not in doubt, you only have to see at Chirk Trout Farm their GVT ‘style’ Wagon No.5 which was built and delivered to Chirk through the generosity of Jewsons of Chirk and Kronospan within three months of the decision to build. Ben and I believe that if the government funded survey confirms the survey that the Trust has already carried out is in fact possible, then by the Spring of next year we shall in Chirk see once again signs of life along the rote of the Glyn Valley Tramway.”

Ben adds: “I endorse what Terry has said and I look forward to the day when out of my lounge window I can see that plume of smoke and steam as at last my dream has become a reality, and I watch another laden train of happy visitors heading down through the cutting if only to Pontfaen. Five years ago few doubted that the Welsh Highland Railway could ever be rebuilt; now construction is all but complete and next year they start carrying passengers. Hopefully in the year after, so will the GVT out of Chirk.

“My wishes are few” says Ben finally, “I WANT TO LAY TRACK AGAIN and I WANT TO BUILD A RAILWAY!

“So if any of you would like to join us, please fill in our online form and we look forward to seeing you “Down The Line!”

Glyn Valley Tramway Trust Tender Documents now online

The tender documents can now be downloaded here. You will also find the Chairman's report and Project Manager's report on our website here.

Glyn Valley Tramway Trust receives £38,500.00 grant

Glyn Valley Tramway Trust receives comined grant of £38,500.00 from Welsh Assembly Government and Wrexham CBC to undertake preliminary work to re-instate GVT from Chirk. Read more here.