Narrow Gauge Railways. What's the Point?

Well quite a lot actually

It does seem strange that the Narrow Gauge Railways of the world do not garner as much attention as the big boys of Railways. For them to appear in the columns of our favourite magazine of the month there normally does need to be something quite profound to warrant taking up white space with Little Trains.

It did cheer us up this week that our very own government (shock horror) have thrown some money away in a 'competition' for Railways to our Little Trains. Baffling as it seems that Railways up and down the land have had to save up tokens from the back of their corn flakes boxes to 'win' money to invest in making Heritage more accessible. But hey, its dollars where needed.

The Government Competition has awarded £1M to a series of Heritage Railways for worthy projects to help boost tourism.

With the popular arguments being set for 'authentic' galas and 'recreating' the past in a true way, it is a shame Narrow Gauge gets left out of both the argument and the answer.

Nothing gives us greater pleasure of pointing out a TV program getting the era of Trains wrong

We sit around watching ITV3 wondering why the hell a Southern Loco is storming past Claude Greengrass in Aidensfield. (Because its fiction)

And WTF are they thinking using the Nene Valley in a Bond Film, everyone can tell its a.. (Yawn)

In our minds, there is one clear winner of this argument. We have in these good ole British Isles a collection of Narrow Gauge Railways that we would say rivals any in the world as a collection of both authentic, historical and down right enjoyable Railways known as The Great Little Trains of Wales.

For those bleating that a Railway adding disabled toilets to a platform goes against the authenticity of a Heritage Railway depicting the Victorian Times, frankly do one. Those peoples grim faces didn't look the same as they did 20 years ago, why on earth not? Don't they care? 

We really do think its time for these Narrow Gauge Railways to be taken seriously and treasured alongside national icons at which they richly deserve to be recognised. 

They don't make the news regularly with side shifting new builds and colossal new building programs costing millions of pounds. 

Wait, we need to go to Porthmadog more.