Planning Starts

New Heritage Carriage – The design phase

After the success of “The Snowdon Lily” which entered service in 2013, we felt that the heritage style carriage concept was an excellent blueprint for the new vehicle. The biggest feedback from our customers was that they loved the excellent craftsmanship and intricate detailing in the carriage in addition to the sense of space and room. Our steam trains were selling out at times weeks in advance, so we decided that a new carriage would be based on a similar design to Lily, but given its own personality and colour scheme.  

“Not only will we be seeing another period style carriage but locomotive number 5 will be returning to service after 15 years absence”.

Our inspiration for the Snowdon Lily carriage was depicted by fantastic imagery from our wonderful archive of Victorian photographs. The “Lily” was characterised by big windows and intricate corner detailing inspired by the ones in the original carriage design.  The design for the new heritage carriage will have very similar detailing and layout to its original ancestors – but with modern glass windows, which was a feature not featured in the 1896 version.

Like the Snowdon Lily, the new carriage is to be built on one of the original chassis from 1895 - carriage number 5. Carriage number 5 was stripped of its body when it was taken from service in 2013 and placed in storage. 

We are proud to be working again with our partners Garmendale Engineering Limited, who built all our new fleet of carriages in 2012/13 and they were eager to receive the chassis from carriage number 5. The tasks that were required to be completed on the chassis included: Realignment of the handbrake linkage, new front and rear beams, new bogie pivots, chassis strengthening, new running board brackets and new body mounts. Furthermore, a full refurbishment of the bogies has been completed onsite by our very own fitters in Llanberis.

 “Work being carried out at Garmendale on the original chassis”.

In our next edition we will be looking at the work that is to take place on the bogies and modifications to the 2013 design that will be seen on the new carriage.