Talks arranged to mark Llangollen Railway's golden anniversary

* Llangollen Station pictured in about 1963.

As part of Llangollen Railway's 50^th anniversary celebrations  - and the national Railway 200 celebrations -  this year, a series of monthly talks have been arranged at Llangollen Station.

Entitled 'Pioneering Engineering' the series focuses on different aspects of the railway's history over the past 160 years. 

The first speaker on Saturday March 15 is John Violet from the Thomas Brassey Society. Brassey who was born a few miles south of Chester in 1805.  

Brassey’s career began as a trainee surveyor on Thomas Telford’s Shrewsbury to Holyhead road through North Wales.  

He learned a lot about civil engineering, became a quarry manager on the Wirral and then set up his own business as a railway contractor. 

Brassey was at the forefront of ‘railway mania’, building one third of all the railways in this country during his lifetime, including the line through Llangollen. 

He built railways all over the world, on almost every continent and, at the height of his career, employed an estimated 85,000 men in his global workforce.

* Tickets are £5 each, with the talk commencing at 6pm in the station's Henry Robertson suite. Full details can be found at: https://llangollen-railway.co.uk/pioneereing-engineering-talks/