Here’s a wonderfully moody shot of Aberllefenni station on the Corris Railway, from Humphrey Household’s Narrow Gauge Railways - Wales and the Western Front. The conditions here are very typically Welsh, and particularly so in the gathering twilight. This is definitely the last train.

By way of comparison, here’s Aberllefenni again (from Discovering Britain’s Little Trains by Julian Holland), after closure of the station and shortly prior to closure of the entire line. Dig that crazy track camber.

(I once visited the main Corris terminal while on holiday twenty years ago, and recall being fairly unimpressed by the rotting sleepers and ramshackle infrastructure for what was supposed to be the “newest preservation project”. Fortunately, the Corris revival appears to be in much better shape nowadays, but there’s still something about it that is refreshingly crude and untidy compared to the overengineered, almost slick presentation of the new WHR further north.)

From his account, Household endured quite an inclement week exploring the Welsh lines in August 1925. This picture of the Talyllyn’s Pentre halt, from which the last train has obviously long gone, looks similar, although the structure is even less impressive than the Corris’s. However, the platform is still rather too smart for my tastes; I have a shot of the TR’s Abergynolwyn station, before its rebuild, that is much more the ticket, which I will post in due course.