Llechwedd Slate Miners Tramway – taking a ride back in time

John W Greaves versus King Solomon

Llechwedd slate caverns are products of the Welsh slate rush during the reigns of George IV and William IV when fortunes were lost easier than they were found by digging holes in Snowdonia.  John W Greaves spent £25,000 in mining costs before striking the Merioneth Old Vein with which he proceeded to roof every continent with his slate tiles.

Tourists travelling on the Slate Miners Tramway

His resultant underground quarries are Europe’s unique rival to the spectacular King Solomon’s mines beneath Jerusalem, and they may now be explored from the comfort of a modern carriage on one of the earliest miners’ tramways.

An engine used for carrying huge slate slabs

The Industrial Revolution

It is a ride straight into the Industrial Revolution and a mining technique used 3,000 years earlier in Israel. Here, for the first time, the outside world can experience something of the faith and the triumph of the tough God-fearing quarrymen of Blaenau Ffestiniog who honeycombed their mountains with 130 miles of tunnels linking hundreds of cathedral-like caverns.

Open to the public

The slate mines of Merioneth remained a mystery to all but the quarrymen until 1972 when a half mile level section was opened to the public. Within nine months it was awarded both the Wales Tourist Board’s “Festival of Wales Trophy” and the British Tourist Authority’s “Come to Britain Trophy” as the most outstanding tourist enterprise with which Britain entered the European Common Market. It is a project unaffected by weather for you can drive right up to a former dressing mill which has been converted into a passenger terminal.

Quarrymen working on a rock face

100 Feet Deep

Soon after entering the tunnel, aboard a battery-driven train, passengers will see abortive trial excavations to left and right. As it takes a right-hand bend the train emerges for a short period on a shelf which looks out upon a modern opencast quarry. Proceeding into the main tunnel you arrive at a succession of caverns, all on the right. The first is a flood –lit bowl, 100 feet deep in which men are still working at the base.

Slate quarryman cutting slate tiles by hand

A whole lifetime in the slate mines

The train stops at the next cavern where a guide, who has spent the whole of his working life in the mines, demonstrates the use of early equipment and as your eyes grow accustomed to the dark gloom, he points out life-sized dummies in working positions on the rock face. The third cavern on the tour has been worked out to the open at the top resulting in some very dramatic lighting effects.

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Cowboy Builder Nightmares - laying tiles

What could be worse than starting your tiling job, and you make an enormous schoolboy error, as you realise that you have glued some of the tiles on back to front?

Actually, it could be worse than that, you could have paid a skilled professional builder or tiler to do the job, and upon inspection of the completed job, it becomes evident that you may have employed a cowboy builder.

 We would ALWAYS advise on going with a tiler or builder that is part of a trade association, such as The Federation of Master Builders, The Guild of Master Craftsmen or the Tile Association as a good start, but you cant beat a personal recommendation.

 

Ask your friends or neighbours first, I'm betting somebody that you know has had experience in hiring a professional to fit the slate tiles in their kitchen.

Whatever you do, try not to just go with the cheapest fitting quote possible, just take a look below at the kind of things that could happen, it really pays to do a bit of research first.

The number one way for a bad tiler to cut corners and keep his materials costs down is to use the bare minimum of tile adhesive.

The most common method is for him to put a blob of adhesive under the corner of each tile (a hugh faux pas by our standards!), and therefore the middle of each tile would have an empty void underneath, and would be completely un-supported.

After a very short time, it is an inevitable fate that the floor tiles will crack right down the middle from the pressure of being walked upon. This is extremely frustrating for the home owner, as it may be weeks or months before anything happens, by which time the tiler would have cashed his pay cheque and be long gone.

The slate tiles in the picture above are very badly stained with grout. We would always advise using a stone sealer on the tiles before grouting them.

Natural stone tiles have a certain degree of porisity, and a fine grout would easily get trapped in the surface texture of the stone. If this is left to dry, the grout residue would be an absolute nightmare to scrub off.

We recently heard a story about a tiler that fitted some slate tiles in a kitchen, and applied the grout without having sealed the tiles first. This could have been quite easily fixed at this point, but once the grout had dried he forgot to wipe the tiles thoroughly and then applied the sealer. This meant that he had actually sealed the grout residue into the surface of the slate tiles. I can only assume that he must have been rushing the job so he could get home early, saying that this was a complete mess is an understatment!

Upon hearing this, I really found it difficult to believe that this tiler hadn't just fallen out of a banana tree! Needless to say, a lot of the tiles had to be replaced. Fortunately in this case, the tiler did pay for the damages.

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