Snowdon Mountain Railcar No. 23 sits outside the Shed at Llanberis on Saturday 29th May 1999 awaiting the return of its two classmates units from the summit. Built in 1995 by Hugh Phillips Engineering of Tredegar, Wales the three railcars did not have a long life on the railway. The Cummins diesel engine was always at the downhill end of the railcar, nearest the camera. They could not operate as single units on the mountain as they only had one set of rack pinions so had to operate as a two or three coach unit at all times. Unusually for the Snowdon Railway the driver could sit at the front of the vehicle when climbing the mountain as a cab was provided at each end. After just six years on the railway No. 21 and No. 23 were taken out of service with major mechanical problems in 2001 with No. 22 following in 2003. Stored for several years at Llanberis in the hope of being sold, this was not to be and all three were scrapped in July 2010.
Bob Woolnough
Subscribe now and get access to our weekly digital magazine and online news content.
Or sign up for a FREE account, and share your railway imagery with thousands of enthusiasts across the globe.
Enter your username and password below
to login to the website
If you wish to comment on the photograph, you can do by entering your comment below. Please note that your username (or nickname if used) will be listed beside any comment passed. All comments pass through an approval process, and any user found to be using inappropriate language will be banned from commenting the future.
If you wish to contact the photographer of this image, please enter your message below and provide your email address, so that the photographer can contact you. All messages are approved by moderators before being sent onwards.
Your email address (required)
People regularly ask if it is possible to link to images on Railway Herald from various forums. This is permitted, as long as you use the link address given below.
You must not direct link to the actual image file, but linking to the page is fine. To link to this image from a forum post, simply copy the whole of the line below, starting with http:// and paste it into your website or forum post - see your forum rules and guidelines on how to do this. When you complete your posting, users of the forum will then see a link, that they can click on to and it will take them straight to that image.
Page address to link to:
If your referring to the image in your forum or blog post, please do remember to credit the original photographer, in this case Bob Woolnough
If you wish to report a problem with this image, please use the form below. This should be used to advise of a corrupt file, copyright issue, incorrect caption details or missing photograph.
Your email address (this is optional, but will allow us to respond to your query)