A Visit To The Brecon Mountain Railway

Rhys Owen ascends the mountains of South Wales for a ride on a narrow gauge railway.

In July 2019 I went to Pant, just north of Merthyr Tydfil, to ride on the Brecon Mountain Railway (BMR). This line is stated to be of 603mm gauge (although, in my opinion, the difference between 600mm and 603mm is a little academic) and runs on part of the former Brecon & Merthyr Railway.

After viewing the workshops I got on the train, which was drawn by No. 1, an American tender locomotive that entered service in June 2019 after extensive rebuilding. BMR No.1 Santa Teresa was originally built by Baldwin as a 600mm 2-6-0 tender locomotive for the Mogyana Railway (the Companhia Mogiana de Estradas de Ferro) in Brazil. Following its sale to the Santa Teresa Sugar Mill it was converted to 762mm gauge. Brought to the UK in 1990, it was acquired by the BMR in 2002. The BMR have extensively rebuilt it, re-gauging it to 603mm, only the original cylinders, main frames, valve gear and some other parts being retained. The BMR workshops built a new boiler, smokebox, cab, wheels and axles, front pilot and new bogie tender as well as the rear subframe and rear truck required to convert the wheel arrangement from 2-6-0 to 2-6-2. Similar conversions were carried out over a century ago by the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes Railroad in Maine. The original engine would have had a considerable overhang at the rear and the rear truck improves the ride when running tender first.