Wales Feed

X-Ray investigates ‘the crammed commute' from the valleys

2015-03-18T13:12:53+00:00

There are a lot of people living in the south Wales valleys who work in Cardiff. Many don’t have a choice - it’s just where the jobs are. And that means a daily commute back and forth to the capital.

The quality of that commute can have a big impact. If it’s a stress-free, enjoyable experience, you arrive in work on time and all set for the day ahead. And if it’s not? Well X-Ray has been hearing stories of some terrible train journeys, that have been causing big problems for some of our viewers.

Lucy on location at Pontypridd as she investigates the performance of train services in the south Wales valleys

If you look at the official figures, Arriva Trains Wales is doing a great job. But passenger satisfaction with punctuality and reliability is falling. And the main problem – you just can’t get a seat.

So for the programme we asked regular travellers to record their experiences of their daily commute. We’ve heard stories of rush hour trains crammed tight with people, with sometimes not enough room for people even to get on.

Lots of the people X-Ray talked to said they are just fed-up with being forced to endure what they feel is a sub-standard service.

So what are Arriva Trains Wales doing about it? Well their Customer Services Director Lynne Milligan agreed to an interview with X-Ray. I couldn’t wait to ask her why it was just so hard to get a seat on a train? Surely that’s not much for regular rail users to expect? Couldn’t they just put on an extra carriage at busy times?

I wasn’t expecting her answer. Lynne told me there are no more carriages across the network available, so they simply can’t increase capacity. So, it’s just tough luck for travellers? Pretty much. And what about delays and cancellations? Well Lynne seemed pretty happy with their record.

So if you’re a regular commuter, it looks like this is how it’s going to be until at more carriages become available – around 2017 according to Ms Milligan. If you’re stuck on a packed train that’s going to seem like a long, long time ahead.

If you need X-Ray’s help, get in touch on 0370 3334334 or email xray@bbc.co.uk. This week's programme is on BBC One Wales, Friday 20 March at 7.30pm or catch us on iplayer, and you can tweet us via @BBCXray or @lucyowenwales.

The Abergele railway disaster

2013-09-19T15:26:40+00:00

On 20 August 1868 news of the Abergele rail disaster shook the nation. It was an incident that destroyed much of the complacency surrounding rail travel and it took 33 lives.

It was, at that time, in those early days of the railways, the worst accident to occur on the new transport network.

The Irish Mail, pulled by the mighty Prince of Wales engine, had left Euston Station just after 7.30am that morning. The Mail was a few minutes late in leaving its London terminus, a deficit it was not able to make up on its journey north. But by 11.30am the train was in Chester where it added another four carriages and a second Guards Van to its load.

The Irish Mail was run by the London and North Western Railway, carrying passengers and mail to Hollyhead where fast steamers would be waiting to transport people and material to Dublin and the whole of Ireland.

The train, that morning in August 1868, included a travelling Post Office where letters and parcels could be sorted as the journey went on.

Running through Abergele on the north Wales coast at 20 minutes to one, the Mail was still five minutes late. Just 25 minutes earlier a goods train had left Abergele, on the same track as the fast approaching express.

Officials were aware of the problem and the goods train was supposed to pull into a siding at Llanddulas to allow the Irish Mail to pass by.

Unfortunately, both sidings at Llanddulas were already occupied by empty goods wagons. It meant that six wagons and the brake or guards van of the goods train were left protruding out onto the main line where they were uncoupled and left to stand.

Anticipating the problem, the Llanddulas station master ordered that loose shunting, without the benefit of an engine, should begin to move the standing empty wagons into another siding, thus making room for the six wagons from the goods train.

During the shunting process, however, the brake in the Guards Van became suddenly released and with a 1 in 100 gradient between Llanddulas and Abergele the wagons began to roll back down the slope – directly into the path of the approaching Irish Mail.

Railwaymen tried desperately to board the wagons and guards van but gravity had taken over. With porters and shunters sprawling in their wake, the loose wagons were soon careering downhill with nobody on board and no way of stoping them.

Approximately two miles outside Abergele the runaway wagons were spotted by Arthur Thompson, the driver of the Mail. At first he thought they were on the adjacent track but, terrifyingly, he soon realised that the wagons were on his line and, more importantly, that they were racing towards him.

Thompson slammed on his brakes, reducing the speed of the express to about 15 miles per hour. He could do no more and with disaster staring him in the face, he leapt from the engine. His fireman stayed on the footplate.

When the express and the goods wagons smashed into each other there was a roar like a bomb exploding and the engine and its tender were immediately derailed. They ploughed 30 feet up the track, still pulling the first four coaches and the front guards van.

Wreckage was strewn across the track and onto the adjacent line where the 'Up Train' - from Hollyhead to London – was expected to pass at any minute.

Not too many people had been injured in the crash but disaster had not been averted. It was unfortunate that two of the goods wagons were carrying drums of paraffin and these now broke loose and ignited. The flames immediately swept over the leading carriages of the express, incinerating everyone inside.

As the fire grew in intensity, railwaymen and farm labourers from the immediate area tried to quell the blaze. They formed a human chain between the railway line and the sea which was a bare 200 yards away. Buckets of water were passed along the line and hurled into the flames. It was no use and the luckless passengers were all burned beyond recognition.

Thirty-three people were killed: passengers, the fireman and the guard in the leading van. All of the passengers in the front four carriages were incinerated but, luckily, nobody else was seriously hurt.

The victims were buried in a mass grave in the churchyard of St Michael's in Abergele. Driver Arthur Thompson also later died from his injuries.

It could have been much worse. With the Up Express expected at any moment, someone was directed up the line and was able to hold the train and halt what would have been a disaster of epic proportions.

In the aftermath of the disaster, a charge of manslaughter was levelled at the two brakesmen from the goods wagons. When they appeared in court later in the year, however, the charges were dropped. An inquiry into the disaster was hugely critical of the Llanddulas Station Master and of the safety precautions of the LNWR.

As a result of the Abergele Rail Disaster all steep inclines across the country were quickly fitted with runaway catchpoints in order to stop any loose or runaway wagons.

The practice of locking carriage doors from the outside was stopped as, clearly, if passengers had been able to open their doors they would have been able to escape. New regulations, particularly about the process of storing and carrying flammable materials, were also introduced on all railway networks.

As with so many important sets of regulations, the changes that came out of the Abergele disaster were made in hindsight, once people had been injured or had died.

It is a sad fact that most changes occur this way but that would have given little comfort to the families of the 33 people who were tragically killed that day in August 1868.

The Barry railway scrapyard

2013-07-18T14:50:04+00:00

In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s and 80s, one of the most popular tourist attractions in south Wales was, not the golden beaches or rugged mountains of the country, but a pile of slowly mouldering railway locomotives that sat silently in their scrap yard, dominating the route from Barry to nearby Barry Island.

The locomotives were old steam engines, nearly 300 of them in all, that were no longer required by British Rail and had been bought by Barry scrap merchant Dai Woodham.

He had initially purchased them with a view to breaking them up and then selling on the valuable steel and other materials. History records other uses for these newly redundant steam locomotives.

A steam train, May 1989

After the Second World War, in line with the nationalisation of so much heavy industry, the great railway companies of Britain were amalgamated into British Rail.

Even at this early stage there were plans to convert the railway network to diesel and electric trains but, in a country that was still recovering from the effects of the war, these proposals were shelved and the decision was taken to remain with steam as the main motive power.

By 1955, however, with more and more people buying cars and the road network improving yearly, British Rail was losing both money and passengers. That year BR came up with their Modernisation Plan, a scheme that advocated replacing steam locos with diesel and electric ones.

The initial idea was to replace only shunting and branch line locomotives but by 1958 things had become so bad that a decision was taken to replace the entire steam fleet of railway engines.

It was a bold move, one that was furiously opposed in many quarters, and it meant that well over 15,000 steam locomotives were suddenly redundant.

Enter the firm of Woodham Brothers. The company had begun life in 1892, scrap merchants who bought old rope and wood from ships in Barry Dock and then sold it on. By 1955 they were dealing mainly in scrap metal, recycling steel and other materials for use by the British steel industry.

British Rail's decision to scrap their steam fleet of locomotives presented Woodham's, run now by the founder's son Dai Woodham, with a great business opportunity. Woodham's weren't the only scrap merchants to buy up British Rail locomotives and rolling stock but they were one of the biggest – and the most efficient.

Dai Woodham even went so far as to spend a week or two at Swindon, learning how to break up heavy railway engines and by 1965 the company had bought over 60 locomotives. Three years later the number had increased to 297.

However, what Dai Woodham soon found was that it was easier – and more profitable – to scrap the wagons and rolling stock than the locos. And that meant that while his company prospered, the long lines of steam engines sat there in the yard, waiting for breaking up at some stage in the future.

Railway enthusiasts quickly realised what a goldmine there was in Barry and flocked to the area in their thousands. And it was not just railway buffs. So many people, children of the 1930s and 40s, men and women who had enjoyed trips on the railway system, whether for business or pleasure, came to stare and spend a nostalgic moment or two just staring at the once proud steam locomotives.

However, the wiping away of the steam railway fleet by British Rail soon created a new phenomenon: the railway preservation enthusiast.

From the late 1960s, men and women who were fascinated by steam railways began to band themselves together into preservation societies, their aim being to acquire – and, if possible, run – steam locomotives for the entertainment of the public. And Dai Woodham's yard in Barry was a great place to start.

There were still 271 locomotives at Barry, plenty for people to choose from. For a long while the lines of steam trains remained in situ as the standard procedure was for societies to choose an engine, put down a deposit and then go away to raise funds.

Slowly, however, the locomotives began to disappear. To begin with they were hauled away by British Rail diesels but this practice soon ended and preservation societies were forced to add the cost of transport by road to their already heavy expenses.

When, in the 1980s, Dai Woodham announced his impending retirement, it spawned a huge last effort to clear out the remaining steam locomotives from the Barry yard. The last one duly left in January 1990, bound for the West Somerset Railway.

In all, 213 steam engines from Woodham's Barry yard were rescued from scrapping and many were restored. Not all of them are running but many are.

The Barry Railway scrapyard remains a fascinating little moment in the history of transport. Acquiring the locomotives may not have begun as an altruistic means of saving part of our heritage, but it certainly ended up that way.

The Great Western Railway creates standard time

2012-09-05T14:30:34+00:00

Until the final years of the 18th century there was no such thing as standard time in Britain. In each town across the country the time of day was decided, firstly, by the simple process of consulting a sun dial and then by the creation of local time.

Unregulated time

In reality, this meant that the further away from London you were, the greater the discrepancy from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). So the furthest reaches of west and north Wales, Pembrokeshire and Gwynedd, were as much as 20 minutes behind London. Even Oxford was four minutes out, while Bristol was no fewer than 10!

It seems incredible to us, used as we are to a regulated and standardised time scale but that was the case right up to the middle of the 19th century.

The station clock at Carnforth Station in Lancashire

Such irregularities meant little while there were limited means of communication between one part of Britain and another. A few minutes here and there were immaterial. But when the railway boom came in the 1840s, it quickly became apparent that things would have to change.

Great Western Railway

The Great Western Railway (GWR) company, running trains to the west country and Wales, soon found that there was considerable confusion as far as guards, station masters and the all-powerful railway timetables were concerned. Watches were having to be continually altered as the trains moved rapidly from one 'time zone' to another, perhaps within the space of just 20 or 30 miles.

And, of course, with trains beginning to run from all parts of the country such confusion invariably led to an increasing risk of accident and collision.

Railway time is introduced

In November 1840 GWR announced that a standardised time – railway time as it was called - would be observed at all their stations. Several other railway companies followed suit and on 22 September 1847 the Railway Clearing House decided that GMT should be adopted as the standard time on all railway stations across the country.

The process was fraught with difficulty as, to begin with at least, towns and villages saw no reason to change their traditional means of telling the time. The ludicrous situation arose where the town railway station at, say, Cardiff, Bridgend or Neath kept one time, and the towns themselves kept another.

As late as 1845 the company was forced to put an addendum on its timetables stating that while London time – as dictated by the Royal Observatory at Greenwich – would be observed at all of its stations, the time in the towns would be different. So the time in Reading might be 12 noon but on Reading station it was 12.04. Confusing, or what?

At some stations such as Bristol clocks were even erected showing two separate times, railway time and local time.

Clearly the situation could not last. Local officials in towns and cities across England and Wales realised that the change had to be for the good of all and by 1855 it was estimated that 95% of towns and cities in Britain had altered their time to the standard GMT.

It was 1880 when government legislation finally settled on a single standard time zone for the country but by then most towns had seen the writing on the wall and had already made the necessary changes. And it was all thanks to the GWR – God's Wonderful Railway.

The world's first passenger hovercraft

2012-07-19T08:04:36+00:00

Half a century ago the future of transport appeared on a beach in north Wales. The hovercraft service from Rhyl to Moreton beach, Merseyside - the first of its kind in the world - was unleashed to masses of enthralled onlookers. This was the way forward - or so it seemed.

The Vickers-Armstrong VA3 hovercraft on Rhyl beach. The world's first passenger hovercraft service. Photo: Brian Whitehead.

On 20 July 1962 a large crowd gathered on Rhyl beach and marveled as the newly developed Vickers VA3 hovercraft, or hovercoach, as it powered up its two roaring engines. The machine signalled a new chapter in the future of transport, making sci-fi dreams reality.

The hovercraft was a huge technological leap forward. As it was being developed in the 1950s the Patent Office was unsure whether to class it as aircraft or boat. Prior to this, various attempts were made to build a craft capable of traversing land, water and anything in between, using a cushion of air and a skirt that lifted the craft above the terrain. In 1959 a hovercraft crossed the English Channel and, like the recent advances in jet-engine technology, enthusiasm was huge.

Half a century ago, traversing the Dee Estuary took over two hours by road. The new hovercoach could, it was claimed, carry 24 passengers at up to 70mph, taking 30 minutes with a scheduled 12 trips per day. The journey cost £2 for a return ticket, with a 20 minute turnaround. It was on an overcast August morning the first two dozen passengers made history, encountering a bumpy crossing to the then bustling seaside town of Rhyl.

Weighing in at 12 tons and spanning 54 feet in length and 27 feet in breadth, the Vickers-Armstrong VA3, run by British United Airways, was one of the first commercially viable hovercrafts rolled out for use. From the summer of 1962 it was constantly at the mercy of the weather, operating for just 19 days out of a scheduled 54 and only managing the proposed dozen trips on two of those days.

Ultimately it was the elements that proved the end of this innovative service. On the afternoon of 14 September the VA3 left the Wirral shore to head for Rhyl, and halfway across the 17 mile journey one of the lift engines failed, soon followed by the second. Eventually the craft made its way to Rhyl. For the next three days, the three captains, along with other helpers frantically attempted to moor the craft, but despite limited success the craft broke free and drifted nearly half a mile out to sea.

Brian Whitehead remembers the fateful few days that brought the curtain down on the world's first passenger hovercraft. "I well remember that night in September 1962, a friend and I were returning home from Prestatyn when we saw the maroons go up at Rhyl lifeboat station.

"We decided to drive the car on to the prom by the lifeboat station and were waved by some of the crew to follow them and drive along the prom shining our headlights to where the hovercraft was slamming into the sea wall. When they had finished lashing it to the prom railings, we were thanked and we left. The next day we read about the incident, stating that there was hundreds of gallons of kerosene on board!"

In the hands of the gales and tides of the Irish Sea, the VA3 was smashed into Rhyl's promenade wall, followed by a further pounding from the waves and a heroic intervention from the Rhyl lifeboat crew.

The ordeal signalled a premature end to the world's first passenger hovercraft service. The accident happened a few days before the service's trial period was up, and signalled an end to the prospect of gliding over the waves for the people of Rhyl.

It happened over Christmas

2011-12-22T09:00:00+00:00

Christmas has always been a time for families, for gathering together around the fire and enjoying the warmth of human contact. In the halls and round houses of the Celts, in the castles and grand houses of the invading Normans, in the burgeoning villages and towns with their wattle and daub buildings, the Christmas season was always well kept in Wales.

Yet the season has also been a time for great events, momentous happenings, and it needs only a cursory glance to realise that the Welsh did not just retire to their hearths for the Twelve Days of Christmas, warming their hands and toes before their roaring log fires. They also found time to get out and achieve!

The first eisteddfod

The very first eisteddfod, for example, was held over the Christmas period of 1176. Poets, story tellers and musicians came together for several days over the season to compete for two chairs, one for poetry, the other for music. The eisteddfod was held at Cardigan Castle and was organised by Rhys ap Gruffydd, the Lord Rhys as he was known.

Even though the term "eisteddfod" was not used when describing this first event, bardic tournaments had been established and continue until this very day - even though they are now held during the summer months rather than over Christmas.

The Christmas truce

The famous unofficial truce that took place on Christmas Day 1914, with World War One raging across Europe, involved many Welsh soldiers. One of the regiments in the front line on this auspicious and amazing day was the Royal Welch Fusiliers.

The story of the truce has been told many times but none is better or more graphic than the account produced by a private in the regiment, Frank Richards. With the help of poet Robert Graves he wrote a book, Old Soldiers Never Die, and one chapter concerns the Christmas truce. Richards was there, at the front, when the unofficial cease fire began:

"On Christmas morning we stuck up a board with 'A Merry Christmas' on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one... Two of our men threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans done [sic] the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench."

Soldiers from both sides spent the day in each others company, out in No Man's Land. Nobody fired or shot at the other side and Frank Richards even recalled that the Germans sent their Welsh enemies two barrels of beer. It was, he recalled, weak and watery, unlike good Welsh ale.

The unofficial truce, which lasted until midnight, was observed along almost the whole of the front line and while senior officers were horrified, Welsh soldiers like Frank Richards were happy to put aside their weapons for the day and to mix with other young men, just like themselves, who were fighting for their country.

Christmas Evans

Several notable Welsh births took place, either on Christmas Day or during the Christmas season. The famous Non-conformist preacher Christmas Evans was born on Christmas Day in 1766 in a village close to Llandysul in Ceredigion. He was the son of a poor shoemaker and grew up illiterate and more than a little savage: he lost an eye in a vicious brawl while still a young man.

Salvation came in the shape of Presbyterian minister David Davies who taught him to read and write in both English and Welsh. The young Christmas became a Baptist minister, his reputation quickly spreading across the whole of Wales. He had amazing insight and imagination and so powerful were the sermons he gave during his preaching tours that he was labelled "the Welsh John Bunyan".

The Gentle Giant

The footballer John Charles was born on the day after Boxing Day 1931. Nicknamed the Gentle Giant, he was never sent off during a professional career that saw him play for clubs such as Leeds, Cardiff and Juventus. Former Cardiff City captain Don Murray played with Charles and has always regarded him as the greatest player he has ever seen:

"He played for Wales on 38 occasions, and took them to the quarter finals of the World Cup. He could play at centre forward or at centre back - at international level. That's a rare and very real ability. I went out to Italy with him, long after he'd left Juventus, and people still remembered him with love and affection. He was simply a great player."

Other notable Welsh births during the Christmas season include actor Anthony Hopkins on New Years Eve 1937 and singer Aled Jones on 29 December 1970.

Nos Galan Races

The Nos Galan Races are now held every New Year's Eve in and around Mountain Ash. The very first races were held on 31 December 1958, the aim being to celebrate the life and career of legendary Welsh runner Guto Nyth Bran. Legend declares that Guto was so fast that he could catch a bird in flight and that he once ran from his home to Pontypridd, a distance of over seven miles, before the kettle boiled!

These days there are races over various distances, the Nos Galan Beacon being lit to signal the start of the various events. The record for the four mile race was set by Tony Simmons in 1971 and, at 17 minutes 41 seconds, it is a time that still stands. The record for the 100 yards sprint is also a long-standing one, being set by Nigel Walker in 1988.

Part of the appeal of the Nos Galan Races is that every year a mystery runner - his or her name kept secret until the night of the races - takes part. Mystery runners in the past have included athletes Lillian Board, Kirsty Wade and David Hemery and rugby stars Jamie Roberts and James Hook.

Tragedy, of course, has also been ever present in the story of Welsh Christmases. On Christmas Day 1806 the Conwy Ferry sank, drowning 13 people, while on Boxing Day 1863 an explosion rocked the Gin Pit in Maesteg, causing the deaths of 14 miners.

On New Years Day 1824, a shipwreck on the Great Orme saw the deaths of 14 passengers and crew while on 1 January 1916, at the height of World War One, the Mumbles lifeboat capsized, drowning three of the crew. Inevitably, there have been many other disasters around Wales over the festive period.

The Christmas season, however, is not the time to think of human misery and pain. Rather, it is a time to celebrate and be happy. And Welsh men and women have done so for many years. They will undoubtedly continue to do so for many more to come.

Phil will be chatting with Roy Noble on Tuesday 27 December from 2pm on BBC Radio Wales about this article.

William Madocks and the Cob at Porthmadog

2011-12-06T11:00:00+00:00

Born on 17 June 1773, William Madocks was a Georgian entrepreneur of startling ability and foresight.

He was the man who built the Cob across the Glaslyn Estuary, thus considerably easing travel - by foot, horse and eventually by rail - between mid and north Wales. He was also instrumental in creating two new communities at Porthmadog and at nearby Tremadog.

The whole enterprise was a phenomenal undertaking, one that exhausted and nearly bankrupted this man of great vision and energy.

Linda crossing the Cob, Porthmadog (Photo: Steve's Wildlife)

Madocks came from an old landed gentry family that had its origins in Denbighshire, although William himself was actually brought up in London. He became MP for Boston in Lincolnshire and later Chippenham in Wiltshire but his interest in his native Wales remained strong and vibrant.

He had a vision of opening up the country, improving its road and communication links and bringing prosperity to the people. As a land reformer and agricultural improver it was therefore inevitable that when he inherited land around the Traeth Mawr Estuary in Gwynedd he would attempt to make changes to the region.

His original intention was to reclaim the Traeth Mawr area for agriculture but this quickly changed as his ideas and schemes began to develop. Soon he was proposing an embankment across the estuary - on which, he declared, traffic from mid Wales could travel in order to reach Porthdinllaen on the Llyn Peninsula. The Irish trade was beginning to gather momentum and Madocks had plans to create a new port at Porthdinllaen in order to carry this traffic.

As it happened, Madocks' plan came to nothing. With the bridging of the Menai Straits, Holyhead on Ynys Mon quickly gained supremacy in the race for the Irish trade - it did not stop William Madocks and his embankment. Work continued on the crossing.

The embankment, known as the Cob, was finished in 1811. Its construction had been long and difficult and had cost Madocks literally all the money he had. By 1811 he was being hotly pursued by a great number of creditors.

The opening of the Cob brought him some relief as now, at least, he could charge people to cross the estuary and, by way of celebration, he organised a four-day feast and eisteddfod.

Disaster threatened a year later when, in February 1812, a great storm hammered the construction and breached the wall. By now, however, the value of the Cob as a crossing place had been proved and Madocks was able to raise money from all over the county to pay for repairs - and to strengthen the enormous edifice. By 1814 it was open once more for traffic but the repairs and sudden cessation of money coming in had, once again, hit Madocks were it hurt most - in his pocket book and wallet.

What really saved William Madocks and the Cob was the slate industry of the area. At his instigation, an Act of Parliament in 1821 gave permission for the creation of a new port at Ynys y Tywyn, the diversion of the river and estuary caused by the building of the Cob having created something of a natural harbour.

To men like Madocks it was quite clear that this harbour would be capable of handling ocean going sailing ships. Ynys y Tywyn was quickly renamed Port Madoc and a new town began to grow up in the shadow of the port.

Blaenau Ffestiniog and its famous slate quarries lay only a dozen miles south west of the new port and town and, as the demand for Welsh slate began to grow, Port Madoc was the logical place to export the raw material, not just to England but to the whole world. The Ffestiniog tramway (and, later, railway) ran from the quarries, across the Cob to the port where the public wharves, built in 1825, were used to load slate onto the schooners.

Porth Madoc - the name was only changed to Porthmadog in 1974 - grew rapidly in the first half of the 19th century. From a population base of nothing at the beginning of the century, the town had, by 1861, managed to achieve an occupancy of just under 3,000. Many of these men and women worked, in one way or another, in the harbour, slate and shipping industries.

For years William Madocks had lived close to the margins, his financial affairs always being tenuous, if not downright perilous. The development of his new town and port, the sudden boom of the slate trade, finally brought him a fair degree of prosperity. He could at last relax and contemplate other propositions.

In 1826 Madocks took himself and his family on a holiday to Italy. On his return he was planning to develop and move into a new house at Morfa Lodge, close to the new town. However, it was not to be. On the return journey the party stopped in France for a brief respite and Madocks was taken ill and died. He was buried on 17 September 1826 in Paris.

Porth Madoc, or Porthmadog, continued to function after the death of its founder but it was a hard and difficult road to travel. As the century moved to its conclusion, the development of Aberystwyth and its better rail links certainly made a dent in the town's profits. The final nail in the coffin came when World War One broke out in 1914 and the lucrative German slate market totally disappeared. The port consequently fell into disuse.

These days Porthmadog survives on its tourist trade. In particular, the Blaenau Ffestiniog railway brings trippers by the score. Perhaps, as they trundle across the Cob into the town, they might stare out at the gigantic wall or embankment and remember William Madocks, without whom there would have been no Cob to travel on!

Bill Frost - the first man to fly?

2011-10-20T10:41:19+00:00

Wilbur and Orville Wright are commonly accepted as the first men to design and fly a power-driven aeroplane. But there was one man, in west Wales, who might just have beaten the brothers to the punch. His name was Bill Frost and in the eyes of many he is the person who deserves the epithet of 'the first man to fly'.

Bill Frost's flying machine flew about 500 yards before being clipped by a tree (image: Gale's Photo)

Bill Frost was born in Saundersfoot on the Pembrokeshire coast on 28 May 1848. The son of John and Rebecca Frost, he became a carpenter on the Heyn Castle Estate in Saundersfoot.

Although a relatively poor man, he became obsessed with the concept of flying. According to legend, in the winter of 1876 he was carrying a long plank of wood while a gale was blowing and the wind - always strong and powerful on that stretch of coast - simply picked him up and carried him several yards through the air. Frost's obsession was born.

Frost was a religious man, and became deacon of his local chapel. He was also an accomplished musician and founded the Saundersfoot Male Voice Choir. But his real interest lay in flight.

Locals, it was said, had seen him running about the fields holding a piece of zinc above his head, perhaps hoping that the wind would once more lift him into the air. The people of the town put this bizarre behaviour down to the grief he was experiencing since his wife and daughter had recently died. It was more likely to be Bill Frost testing out the concept of aerodynamics.

In 1894 Frost applied for a patent for a flying machine; the design was registered on 25 October that year. The machine was something of a cross between a glider and an airship, and was equipped with two reversible fans designed to lift the machine into the air.

When aloft the wings would be spread by means of a lever and the machine would move forward and down. When the lever was pushed the other way the machine would rise once more.

Bill Frost built his aircraft in the workshop of his house on St Bride's Hill in Saundersfoot. It was over 30 feet in length and was apparently made of bamboo, canvas and wire. The gas bags or pouches that helped keep the craft aloft were filled with hydrogen.

Unfortunately there are no photographs or written testimonials but Frost - and many people from Saundersfoot - claimed that he flew in his glider/airship on or around 24 September 1896. He travelled, it was claimed, for about 500 yards, a distance that, if true, was considerably longer than the Wright Brothers managed seven years later in 1903.

The flight was not without incident, however. The undercarriage of the machine caught in a tree and he crashed in a field. Although Frost managed to repair the flying machine, disaster was waiting to happen.

Despite being tethered to a tree the machine was totally destroyed in a storm, with pieces spread over a wide distance. Frost had neither the money nor the time to start again and his patent lapsed after four years.

The story of Bill Frost and his flying machine is a fascinating one. Unlike the Wright Brothers he did not have any independent witnesses to the event or, most important of all, any photographic evidence that he had taken to the air.

Bill Frost died in March 1935. By then he was nearly 90 years old and was both blind and poor. He was not bitter but bemoaned the fact that the government, following his first flight and the disaster that befell his machine, had turned down his request for funding.

The government stated that they had no intention of using aircraft either for navigation or for warfare. In the light of the later development of aircraft during World War One, it seemed to Frost and everyone else to be a strange and rather short-sighted statement.

Everyone who knew him was clear that Bill Frost was the most truthful of men. If he said that he had flown then he most certainly had done so. At this distance, however, and without written or photographic proof, it is hard to come down, one way or another. The story remains one more fascinating episode in the history of flight - and of Wales.

'Wales breaks its silence...' at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea

2011-10-07T09:58:29+00:00

Fifty-three Welsh Italians perished on the SS Arandora Star in 1940. The liner was transporting German and Italian internees along with prisoners of war to internment camps in Canada.

Arandora Star

The Arandora Star, which previously operated as a cruise ship, had been commandeered by the Admiralty in the early part of World War Two. On 1 July 1940 it left Liverpool with nearly 1,200 Italian and German internees on board.

Replica scaled model of the Arandora Star in her pre-war, luxury cruising days, when her beautiful appearance earned her the nickname, The Wedding Cake.

The following day she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U Boat resulting in the loss of more than 800 lives. The internees who did survive were brought back to the UK and immediately shipped to internment camps in the Australian outback.

The fascinating stories of those touched by the tragedy now forms an exhibition at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea.

Terracotta sculpture of Mary Cradling the Arandora Star, by artist Susanna Ciccotti

Speaking about the exhibition, curator, Paulette Pelosi, a member of the Arandora Star Memorial Fund in Wales said:

"For 70 years, the people of Wales, both Welsh and Italian, for whatever reason, remained mostly silent about the tragedy. As highly emotive stories began to be told to members of the fund, it seemed a logical and worthy tribute for me to create the exhibition."

Wales Breaks its Silence...From Memories to Memorial runs until Sunday 30 October at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea.

Phil Carradice wrote a blog about the loss of the SS Arandora Star. You can read it here.

The Llandow air disaster

2011-10-06T14:18:28+00:00

In the years after World War Two there was a surge in demand for air travel. Numerous private companies, many operating aircraft that had been sold off as surplus to requirements after the war, were established when people began to realise that travel by aeroplane really was something that was available to everyone, not just the rich.

In 1950 the Welsh rugby team was on the brink of its first Triple Crown for nearly 20 years. Victories over England and Scotland set up a deciding match with Ireland and thousands of Welsh supporters decided to make the trip across the Irish Sea to watch the game. Most travelled in the usual way, by boat from Holyhead or Fishguard.

However, a Cardiff entrepreneur called Harry Dunscombe planned to charter an aeroplane and, at £10 a ticket, fly from Llandow airfield in the Vale of Glamorgan to Dublin, especially for the game.

The aircraft Dunscombe hired was an Avro Tudor V, owned and operated by Fairflight Ltd in Buckinghamshire, a small company operating just a couple of planes. And Llandow field was certainly not a commercial airport. In fact it was an old RAF war time base, one that was still operating in a military capacity, and did not have facilities for passenger comfort or for essential requirements like weighing baggage.

The flight to Dublin on Saturday 11 March 1950 was piloted by Captain Parsons. The trip was uneventful and the passengers were soon making their way to Lansdowne Road to watch the match. Wales duly won an exciting and pulsating game of rugby and the 78 passengers, after a night in the bars of Dublin, arrived at Collinstown Aerodrome the next day just after lunch for the flight back to Llandow.

The return flight took just under an hour and, with dozens of friends and families waiting to welcome people home, the plane was soon spotted in the west, about two miles from Llandow airfield.

With its undercarriage down the aircraft seemed to be flying very low and then, when it was just half a mile away, the engines seemed to be suddenly boosted. There was a roar like thunder and the aircraft rose steeply about two or three hundred feet.

Then, before the horrified gaze of the spectators, the engines cut out. The plane dropped like a stone and fell into an adjacent field. After the crash there was a deathly silence before panic and utter pandemonium set in.

RAF rescue crews were hurriedly despatched from the nearby St Athan air base, as well as ambulances and fire tenders - although there was no fire - which came from Cardiff.

Three survivors, cut and bleeding, had already staggered from the wreck and 10 more were quickly pulled, alive, from the fuselage of the Avro Tudor. Unfortunately they later died in hospital and when the casualty figures were finally put together it was only the three men first out of the plane who had survived. They had been sitting together in adjacent seats at the rear of the aircraft and must be regarded as three of the luckiest men on the planet.

One of the three survivors was Handel Rogers. Traumatised by the crash, he vowed that in the future he make every second of his life count for something special - and he did. He became president of the Welsh Rugby Union.

Many of the dead came from the Monmouthshire area of Wales, and several villages lost three or four of their inhabitants. It was a tragedy on a national scale and the Western Mail organised a disaster fund that soon raised over £40,000 for the families and the bereaved communities.

In total 75 passengers and five crew members died in the Llandow Air Disaster. It was, at the time, the worst accident in British aviation history.

A court of enquiry was held in Cardiff a few months later, lasting for eight days. All sorts of rumours had been rife, including one that passengers had been singing and dancing in the aisles as the aircraft came in to land. This report was duly squashed at the enquiry but no firm or clear causes of the accident were ever established.

One possible cause, it was decided, might have been uneven loading of luggage - certainly extra baggage had been taken on at Dublin and with no weighing facilities at Llandow it was never clear how much extra weight the plane was carrying.

In the years after the Llandow air disaster many more commercial airports were established in Britain, Rhoose Airport - later renamed Cardiff International Airport - being just one of them. And whether or not extra baggage contributed to the crash, the weighing of luggage has been a crucial factor in air travel ever since.

The end of the Conway

2011-10-05T09:50:13+00:00

The coastline of Wales has seen thousands of shipwrecks over the years but none is more interesting than that of the famous boys' training ship Conway which went ashore in the Menai Straits on 14 April 1953. The Conway was an old wooden battleship, one of many once used to train boys for careers afloat.

The ship involved in the wreck was actually the third Conway, the previous vessels having been changed as they became too tired and dilapidated. This third Conway was actually the 91 gun battleship Nile, but everyone associated with the training ship knew her only as the Conway.

From a fleet of over 100 training establishments that were once located around the coast of Britain, ships and shore bases that trained both officers and crew, by 1953 the Conway had become almost the last of her kind.

Founded in 1859, she was intended to train officers for Britain's enormous merchant fleet. She was, to begin with, moored off Rock Ferry on the Mersey and here 120 young boys came for a two-year intensive course of seamanship before beginning their careers as apprentices in one of the great shipping lines.

It was a hard and rugged life. The upper deck had to be scrubbed every day, regardless of the weather, the task invariably being carried out in bare feet. The rope's end across the back was a common punishment if tasks, physical and theoretical, were not carried out quickly or efficiently enough. As you might expect on an old ship full of adolescent boys, a fair amount of bullying took place. As one young trainee later said:

"I don't think I shall ever forget the stinging clout I got on my head on my first day; and all my toffee was taken from me. There was too much bullying and small new chums were not looked after as they should have been. The result was that I lived to bully other small boys but, thank goodness, I was soon ashamed of myself."

Amongst famous Conway boys were the poet John Masefield, who later wrote a book about the ship, and Captain Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel. Webb, incidentally, was not considered a particularly good swimmer while he was training on board.

The Conway remained on the Mersey until the dark days of World War Two when, for safety reasons, she was moved to the Menai Straits and moored, firstly off Bangor and, from 1949, off Plas Newydd on Ynys Mon. The ship was owned by the Mercantile Marine Service Association, continuing to operate as a training ship, despite her old age and lack of modern facilities. Then in 1953 it was decided that, if she was to continue functioning, she required a refit.

The intention was to tow her to Cammel Laird's dry dock in Birkenhead, a task that involved navigating the treacherous Swillies Channel in the Menai Straits. It was a trip that had to be done at high tide but, even then, the clearance between the Devil's Teeth Rocks was a mere four feet.

On the morning of 14 April, towed by the tugs Dongarth and Minegarth, the old ship left her moorings. All went well until the Conway passed the Menai Suspension Bridge and there she was met by the flood tide. A sudden north-westerly wind doubled the strength of the tide and the two tugs simply could not make headway. The towing hawser parted and Conway's bows swung helplessly round towards the Caernarfonshire shore.

Under the gaze of thousands of enthralled spectators, there was a roar like a million pebbles being washed along the beach and ship ploughed up onto the foreshore. An inspection soon revealed that her hull was badly buckled and strained - there was little hope of refloating her, at least not immediately. During the very next high tide, however, the Conway flooded aft and before anyone could do anything about it she had broken her back.

The Conway was abandoned and lay for many months on the foreshore. She provided an interesting attraction for the tourists and the locals alike, most of whom had never seen an old woodenwall in the flesh, so to speak. The ship's trainees were educated, for a while, at Plas Newydd, the house of the Marquess of Anglesey, but the great days of the British mercantile marine were already coming to an end. There was, quite simply, no longer any need of an establishment like the Conway.

Declared a total loss, it was decided that the Conway should be broken up where she lay. This was duly done, the remains of the hull being finally destroyed by fire in October 1956. It was a sad end for a once proud ship, a vessel that had provided thousands of officers for the merchant navy - and more than a few for the Royal Navy, too.

In the wake of the disaster Captain Eric Hewitt, who had been on board at the time, was much criticised. However, the responsibility for the tow rested with the towing master, not Conway's captain. Knowing the strength of the tides in the Menai Straits, Hewitt had asked for three tugs but had been told that two were more than enough for the job - as they sometimes say, hindsight is the only exact science.

Tanker disasters

2011-09-26T12:52:57+00:00

Pembrokeshire has always had its fair share of shipwrecks. In the days of sail it was inevitable that, with a westerly wind driving frail schooners and ketches onto the rugged coast, maritime disasters of one sort or another were bound to happen.

And when the oil industry came to Milford Haven in the early 1960s there were many prophets of doom who predicted ecological disaster should one of the giant oil tankers that regularly sailed in past St Ann's Head ever run up onto the rocks around the south Pembrokeshire coast. In the main, such disasters have not occurred - that does not mean, however, there have been no accidents and when shipwrecks have taken place the threat from oil spillage has been real and terrifying.

In fact there was near disaster right at the beginning. Esso's new refinery at Gelliswick Bay in the Haven had only just opened for business when, on 8 July 1960, the "Esso Portsmouth" began discharging 32,000 tons of crude oil at the terminal. She was the first ocean-going tanker to tie up at the refinery and expectation and excitement ran high. Unfortunately, so did the risk of danger, not only for the ship and refinery but for the whole town of Milford.

Almost as soon as the tanker began to discharge her cargo, there was a structural failure in one of the arms that took off the oil in huge pipes from the ship and a serious spillage took place. Within seconds the oil had ignited and a massive explosion rocked the area. Firemen quickly put out the flames and the majority of the cargo was saved but the hull of the "Esso Portsmouth" was seriously damaged and buckled.

The explosion was a warning. No serious oil leak had occurred but the incident could so easily have resulted in chaos. The next time an oil tanker was in trouble off the Pembrokeshire coast things did not go quite so well.

On 12 October 1978 the "Christos Bitas", en route from Rotterdam to Belfast, ran onto the Hats and Barrels Reef, some 10 or 15 miles off the coast. The ship was quickly re-floated and the captain decided to continue with the voyage. Unfortunately, the rocks had ripped a large hole in her bottom and the ship was now leaking oil at an alarming rate. The owners, BP, ordered her to stop and two tankers came alongside to take off over 20,000 tons of crude oil.

Although the "Christos Bitas" was towed out into the Atlantic and scuttled, thousands of tons of oil leaked into the sea. Over forty vessels were deployed, laying down booms around the oil and using skimmers to try to reclaim what they could. Aerial spraying, when it was feared the slick might reach the bird sanctuaries of Skomer and Skokholm, was also employed. In the end, after many days of hard physical effort, the oil was mopped up but not before somewhere in the region of 9,000 sea birds had been killed.

Clearing up at Milford Haven

Pembrokeshire's next oil disaster, the third largest oil spillage in Britain, took place on 15 February 1996 when the "Sea Empress" grounded on the rocks of St Ann's Head at the mouth of Milford Haven. She was bound for the Texaco refinery on the south shore of the Haven but was pushed off course by the current and hit the rocks just after 8.00pm.

The "Sea Empress" had punctured her hull and rescue attempts by tugs from the Port Authority served only to make matters worse as the ship repeatedly re-grounded, slicing open her bottom even more. Over the course of the following week 73,000 tons of crude oil spilled into the water and the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park was faced with an ecological disaster of major proportions.

It took six weeks for the oil slick to disperse and in that time thousands of birds had died, caught up in the cloying and clogging mixture. Shearwaters, guillemots, puffins, birds that had made their homes on the islands off shore, fell victim to the oil. There was also serious damage to the shore line right around the coast, seaweed and invertebrates being particularly badly hit.

A rescue centre for oiled birds was set up in Milford and dozens of volunteers (as well as paid workers) toiled for days to try to minimize the extent of the disaster. Tugs and other vessels from as far away as Dublin and Plymouth also came to help.

The "Sea Empress" disaster was only the third major incident involving oil tankers to take place in and around Milford Haven. Perhaps the area has been lucky. One thing is certain - the potential for future disaster remains and the only way to avoid trouble is with extreme caution and vigilance. It is the least our coastline deserves.

Museum prepares to show underwater footage of 1859 Royal Charter shipwreck

2011-09-12T09:21:19+00:00

From next month, visitors to Chester Grosvenor Museum will be able to view underwater video footage of one of Wales' most notable shipwrecks.

On 26 October 1859, a steam clipper called Royal Charter, was returning from Melbourne to Liverpool. Laden with gold, the vessel was battered by a force 12 hurricane and smashed onto rocks off Moelfre, Anglesey. A total of 459 passengers and crew subsequently perished with only 21 passengers and 18 crew surviving the destruction.

Diver Chris Holden, treasurer of the British Sub-Aqua Club's Chester branch, will show the film at the Chester Grosvenor Museum on 25 October as part of a lecture to mark the 152nd anniversary of the maritime tragedy.

Along with the unseen footage, it will be the first opportunity for many people to see artefacts from the wreck.

Read more about this story on the BBC Wales News website.

The flying boats of Pembroke Dock

2011-08-03T12:50:13+00:00

In the 1930s and 40s one west Wales town played host to the largest flying boat base the country had ever seen - maybe even the world. That town was Pembroke Dock and for nearly 30 years residents of the community woke each morning and went to bed at night with the deep throated roar of Pegasus engines rolling in over the town and reverberating off the waters of Milford Haven.

The town of Pembroke Dock burst into existence in 1814, its main purpose being to build warships for the Royal Navy. The dockyard of the town was in existence for just 112 years but in that time it created dozens of giant battleships - including the Duke of Wellington, the largest woodenwall ever built - and no fewer than four royal yachts for Queen Victoria. At one stage the yards employed over 4,000 men with dozens more, throughout the county, depending on the place for their livelihood.

When the dockyard closed in 1926 it left the town it had spawned without hope or reason for existence. Then, in 1931 the RAF announced that they were establishing a flying boat base in the eastern end of the old yard - the sheltered expanse of deep water, the very thing that had brought the ship builders to the region in the first place, was, it seemed, ideal for the seaplanes of the time.

The coming of the flying boats could never hope to replace the economic security provided by the Admiralty dockyard but it did offer some slim consolation to the people of the town. It meant work for many; it meant businesses could thrive and prosper; it meant the town was alive again.

The RAF had meant to stay for just a few short months, but remained in west Wales for 29 years. The first aircraft based in the town were the Supermarine Southamptons of No. 210 Squadron. New barrack blocks and wide slipways were built inside the old dockyard walls and two huge hangers were erected, enormous structures that can still be seen today.

Many famous airmen served at PD, as the flying boat base soon became known. Wing Commander Bob Leckie was the first station commander but perhaps the most renowned of these was Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the air marshall who later went on to mastermind the Allied bombing offensive against Germany in World War Two.

As might be expected, the base at PD saw its greatest hours during the war. Throughout those turbulent and dangerous times, giant Sunderland flying boats - and the odd Catalina - patrolled the Western Approaches, searching out the deadly U Boats that were threatening Britain's very existence. For the crews of these huge machines, patrols were long, cold and arduous and contact with the enemy was rare.

When the Sunderlands did encounter opposition, however, the battles were life and death affairs. In one well known incident in 1942 a single PD Sunderland was attacked by no fewer than eight JU88s while over the Bay of Biscay. The Sunderland, bristling with guns, was no easy target and in the fight three German planes were shot down, a fourth being badly damaged. And although damaged the Sunderland managed to get back to PD.

When peace came again in 1945 the base at PD began, inevitably, to lose its importance. Aircraft design had moved on and seaplanes, always at the vagaries of weather and tide, clearly had a limited operational lifespan. Nevertheless, Sunderlands from PD undertook the vital role of supplying members of the British North Greenland Expedition in 1952. The expedition and the job of the PD aircraft were well recorded in local and national press.

The sight of the beautiful white flying boats moored on the haven off the town - or, occasionally, powering down the estuary as they lumbered gracefully into the air - are images that that impinged themselves into the minds of all Pembroke Dock children. The giant aeroplanes seemed to symbolize security and strength and were as much a part of growing up in the old dockyard town as games of football or cricket on the Barrack Hill, overlooking the yards.

The air station at Pembroke Dock finally closed in March 1959, the land where the workshops and hangers stood being given back to the Admiralty. Yet Pembroke Dock was not quite finished with flying boats.

In 1963 Sunderland M2824, originally having served with No 201 Squadron in Pembroke Dock, was presented to the town by the French Navy. A trust was established, local air cadets (including the author) began work cleaning and polishing and the plane was opened to the public as a living memorial and museum. Each year thousands of tourists and locals visited the aircraft but, finally, as time and age began to make themselves felt, in 1971 she was dismantled and taken to a new home at Hendon Museum.

These days the old dockyard and the flying boat base operate as the terminal for ferry boats across the Irish Sea. Many of the buildings put up by the RAF are still there, however, and the Sunderland Trust operates a small visitor in the western end of the yards. At the moment it might be little enough to mark the passing of such a huge operation but, like the PD base itself, it will surely grow and grow in the years ahead.

You can find out more about the flying boats of Pembroke Dock and the Flying Boat Visitor Centre on the Pembroke Dock Sunderland Trust website.

Wales and the world's first passenger helicopter service

2011-06-29T14:15:55+00:00

These days we regularly see helicopters flashing over head and think nothing more about it but in the immediate post-war days, helicopters were a rare sight in the skies above Britain.

So, it comes as something of a surprise to find that the world's first scheduled passenger helicopter service took place over Welsh air space.

On 1 June 1950, British European Airways, as they were then, began a daily helicopter service between Liverpool and Cardiff, stopping off at Wrexham to pick up passengers at a field, now occupied by Sainsbury's.

Helicopters, of sorts, had been developed long before before World War Two. Leonardo da Vinci had already drawn up plans for what he called "an aerial screw" and as early as1907, Jacques and Louis Bolguet had designed and built a gyro-plane.

The Germans produced the Focke-Wulf FW 61 in 1936 but it was not until six years later that Igor Sikorsky built an effective and efficient machine.

Development of the helicopter concept took time to gather momentum - the idea of lift and thrust being provided by one rotating blade being alien to most flyers!

The war also hindered development, so it was not until October 1949 that the first cargo service using helicopters (a mail service) was inaugurated in Los Angeles in California.

By 1950 BEA was extending and developing its services. So a helicopter service across the length of Wales, once the technology was in place, seemed like "a good idea." Helicopters, BEA thought, were the future of air travel.

Three helicopters were used on the route. They were Westland Sikorsky S51 machines and were capable of carrying three passengers as well as their baggage and a certain amount of cargo. The helicopters cruised at 85 miles per hour and the trip between Liverpool and Cardiff took one hour and 40 minutes.

The small number of passengers seems, now, to be ludicrous and prompts the question of how on earth BEA ever expected to make a profit on the service. The cost of the trip was £5.10 shillings for a return fare and the service was to operate three times daily.

People could take a helicopter flight to Liverpool's Speke Airport (now John Lennon Airport)

Wrexham, in those far off days just after the war, was a fairly large industrial centre and the company decided that the helicopters would land, shortly after take off from Liverpool's Speke Airport (now the John Lennon Airport) to pick up any businessmen who wished to journey quickly to south Wales.

Hindsight is always the only exact science and, as might be expected, the service was not a success. There simply weren't the number of potential passengers. The route was flown for just under a year, closing in March 1951.

In that time only 219 passengers were carried. Perhaps the failure was a portent of things to come. Scheduled helicopter flights have never really been established, although there are plenty of private machines and commercial helicopter companies operating in the United Kingdom. Perhaps one day in the future...

The enterprise might have been short lived but it did at least give Wales another important first - the first helicopter passenger service in the world.