Disaster on the Dinorwic Gravity Railway

Dinorwic Quarry includes the remains of the Braich levels of the Dinorwic Slate Quarry which operated from around 1770 to 1969. Many of the levels remain intact following the construction of Dinorwic Pumped Storage Power Station. The series of ‘A’ inclines from Gilfach Ddu and the Anglesey barracks have been scheduled and preserved.
The surviving remains of the site include four substantial counterbalanced inclines, complete with rails, sleepers and drumhouses, a weighbridge house, locomotive sheds, water tanks and an office and caban. There is also a blondin with winding house and an electric compressor house. There is a large slate mill with two integral engine houses and saws, catslide extension and smithing hearth.
In 1972 the site opened to the public as a museum. Equipment was collected from other slate quarries and parts of the site were restored. It is now the National Slate Museum and part of the National Museum of Wales.The sudden closure of the quarry in 1969 meant that many buildings, structures and machines survived on some of the higher, more remote levels. The very visible nature of the workings when viewed from the slopes of Snowdon or across Peris lake bring home the form and extent of the quarry, and the construction of a major pumped storage scheme in the lower part of the quarry from 1975 to 1984 added to the sense of the ‘engineering sublime’.
This area and the Ogwen valley component part of the proposed site have much in common but also significant points of difference. Whereas part of Penrhyn quarry is active, Dinorwic is entirely relict, and offers both the specialist and the interested visitor a text-book explanation of slate-quarrying practice from the late eighteenth century to the 1960s.
Dinorwic Series
Episode 1: • Adventure to the Secre...
Episode 2: • Disaster on the Dinorw...
Episode 3 • Anglesey Barracks: A G...
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