you could stand here and you would be seeing the trains passing
and it's all about bringing the community together happy and celebrating
our heritage
hello everyone I'm Rebecca I'm Paul and where are we today Rebecca
we're in Wales Wales we love Wales we're in the Brecon Beacons as well which is
normally extremely beautiful it's beautiful it's just 30 wet so today it's
just beautiful not extremely beautiful today we're on our way to Talyllyn
which was just to the east of Brecon we're not going to tell you a huge
amount about the history of what we are doing because we're meeting a couple of
guys both called Roger which is to me easy to remember we're going to tell us
a little bit about the history of the area they're in, there's a tunnel as a
junction which connected three lines bit of excitement today we rely for to this
right so here we are here we are with Roger and Roger
Welcome both, this is gonna be an ongoing bad joke all day long I think
Roger and Roger, its a bit like all the Dave's at Swindon heritage railway right
yes so Roger has lived in the village for a number of years
yes 1955 Wow okay so you definitely remember the railway I do, Roger is
relatively new but a relatively new that's not really the case you've been
here a decade, just under a decade yes, fantastic so where are we now
well we are standing in the grounds in the front garden of a house called drostraege
the house overlooks clangers Lake which is in the distance beyond which
we've got the Black Mountains and you've got Hereford over that way as well
yeah and so on but one of the things that I think is very important about the
house here if you look at the house it is quite an elegant Edwardian house in
an area that is extremely rural and you don't often get houses of that style and
scale in a very rural area it was built in 1910 and the reason I believe that
the house was placed here and built here is because it is the retirement home of
a local farmer the farmer at his farm Drostra a few miles from here and on
retirement he decided to have a house built specially for him here at this
very spot now why would he have the house built here well very good reason
the railway station Talyllyn railway station is literally a few yards to our
left two railway lines coming across in front of us one from our right which is
from the direction of north and southwest on the map and then beyond
that where you've got the escarpment of the Black Mountains you've got then the
line coming down from Hay which is the Midland line so the one to the self is
the Brecon and Murphy that's it the breakneck and Murder from the south west
Torpantua up on the hill.
and tally Bont and then you've got the line coming from the Northeast that
comes from hey the Midlands in fact and that they both met at Talyllyn and that
is absolutely critical I think to the importance of the Talyllyn station and
Junction so going back to 1910 the house is just being built you could stand here
and you would be seeing the trains passing you'd get the noise you'd get
the smoke and it's all visible yeah absolutely fantastic so we have an
insight that there's this guy he retired because his house where everything is probably
but he enjoys the railways you obviously
enjoys a railway it's close to it yet also we saw it as is quick way into
Brecon, yeah and obviously other places
we always say we like we're a community's got together and they've
done something or sometimes there is access to an old station and they've
done up this is perfect this is amazing this is exactly what we talked about
this is the museum Roger and Roger and part of the history society have
have constructed and so did you acquired the box we acquired the box the original
place but everything around you we have done yeah by fundraising grants from the
Brecon Beacons Parks Authority yeah be very supportive and it's all about
bringing the community together happy and celebrating our heritage so we've
provided a lot of information about the railway here at the station some lovely
maps all done by a professional graphic designer we've got the photographs in
the booklet there that Rogers holding so this so you've got that there and if you
lift that up inside we have a memory book where anyone can write down
memories of the time when they were living your doing the railway time
they can put some personal memories down and then even if we get visitors who may
have something to say about the area can write something in there he'll know yes
this is where we are this is the road to ?? there's a junction over there
yeah the railway station was there yeah but if we start from the beginning the
Midland Railway comes in this way and this was their first station okay yep
and but the Brecon and Mertyhyr managed to open their line two years before the
midland got here oh really then they had to go down here reverse
back out and down south this obviously took them quite a long time so
they said we've got a good step over here outside the tunnel
yeah we've built our own station okay and then this station remained open
until 1878 um eventually then this station closed
so sort of ten years later just under ten years later that's right
So on this this station things became quite large affairs you can see from the
diagram this we had the refreshment rooms on the station right and this is
we'll see this building when we
go down there yeah and these are the last proprietors here Bill and violet
yeah but of course nobody took any
photographs so I've got this image in my mind to her and Roger been retired art
teacher yeah he said well you sketch it out and I'll see if I can draw it up
oh well and we did that and with the assistance of the people who live in
this house because this is the lounge obviously yes and a rough idea of the
layout Roger knew Mike Noble okay who was the illustrator of Thunderbirds okay
as you do he handed my sketches to Mike and I hadn't put any people in yeah and
this is what came back wow it's absolutely amazing yeah by and
if we make our way down to your station quietly I said we moved here in 1955
yeah and my father kept the car rented a garage in Brecon yep and the car was
kept in Brecon because we had 16 trains a day 18 and 8 out right
wow so in the morning was a school school train yep and they would
be probably 20 people in the waiting room from virtually somebody from every
house yeah yeah and this time there would be a roaring fire in the waiting
room yeah and you get all the gossip and
as a child only saw our family car if we were going to spend a grandparent so dad
brought it home to service it
and the other fact is that we looked at all the census records yeah
nearly every occupant or one or two occupants of every house worked on the
railways
now I went to school all this was clear and you could see you could see straight
down on on to the track bed.
there were three three signal boxes in Talyllyn one on each point of the
triangle yeah this was the West signal box which was
situated where that little summer house.
On this side the buildings started from about here with a metal hat which was the lamp
room yep and then and I was kept generally away from the yes yeah yes
then your the porters room here yeah then you had the lady's waiting room yep
with the stationmaster's office on the other side and then the other side of
that was the booking office and waiting room okay and the foursome the gents
toilets were
walk up to the tunnel entrance still on the edge of the platforms. As I
said back there for now we're nearly single track so there have
been points here because through the tunnel was obviously a single track
already been widened from the tram road to accommodate now standard gauge and
yeah there's a view back toward station and here are the platforms where they're
standing right now nearly at the end nearly on the down point of the platform
and nearly at the tunnel we're gonna get some get some pictures
So the station done, tunnel done, a little bit history the museum fantastic we were
we're running out on light getting on on us the last thing we wanted to talk
about was the the massive Junction yes it's a massive engine shed room is about
200 feet long yeah two roads through it yeah a lean-to on the one side to keep
an engine in apparently that would only one engine ever kept in right in this so
we must assume that the shed was used mainly for maintenance yeah there's two
pits in there and we found a lot of fire bars break blocks and things like that
yeah in that area it's strange I couldn't actually because the access to
the engine shed is off the Midland Railway course here come from it over
here comes down like that that's right but the engine shed was built by two the
Brecon to Merthyr okay so that's fresh change it is but and of course in that
loop that's the loop with the Queen spent the night in 1955 okay the Royal
train she came to open the two hundredth Brecon show
They spent the night in the loop right on the train in the loop
yes yeah yes right on top secret but everybody knew about yes well of course
in those days as happens now I believe the trains the toilets went out onto the
track on the end yet the train was here for about 16 hours so they panicked and
they hang around all the houses are begging borrowing stealing buckets it
involves anything to put under the train because of course you had a bath and
everything on you didn't she so we're probably gonna sign off very soon
because these guys have got gone they go down with their lives we've we need to
leave for it to dark so a massive massive thank you for your time to know
we've really really appreciate you yeah and it's been wonderful you get gaining
access to the tunnel you're serving get some pictures that's all we really ever
really want to do yeah get some really good pictures so um yeah thank you very
much Dan was very card thank you very much pleasure meeting you.