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With a whistle and a hiss, the 47-year-old Beyer-Garratt steam locomotive lurched out of Caernarfon station, sending plumes of smoke into the air and obscuring the Welsh town's 13th-century castle.
The glistening black train chugged along one of Britain's oldest narrow gauge railways, winding through blackberry bushes and
the jagged crags of northern Wales to Rhyd Ddu, a village at the foot of Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales.
For the people of northern Wales, the Welsh Highland Railway acts as a link to a long-dead industrial past, when mining and slate quarrying dominated in this hilly region.
Many now hope plans to extend the track will help shape the future, by luring more tourists to places like Caernarfon, a seaside town where most people speak Welsh.
The railway was opened in 1923 to haul slate from the foothills of Snowdonia's purple saxifrage-covered mountains but it closed down in 1936 because of a decline in the mining industry and a lack of passengers.
For some, the railway was one of the greatest white elephant schemes of British industrial history: by 1927, the growing popularity of road transport and the declining slate industry pushed the slow and infrequent railway into receivership.
The latest drive to revive the line dates from 1989 and was initially supported by rail enthusiasts who won backing from local authorities and community groups.
Now, the £35 million ($90 million) initiative is in its final stage. Track work has begun on a final extension and is expected to be completed by the end of 2008.
The finished line is due to open early in 2009.
"The impact of this project will be pretty big," said Paul Lewinn, general manager of Ffestiniog Railway, which operates the line.
The railway is being extended around 16km from Rhyd Ddu to Porthmadog where it will link with a line travelling on to Blaenau Ffestiniog, once the capital of the slate quarrying industry, for a 64km total trip.
Ffestiniog Railway, the oldest independent rail company in the world, put up £25 million for the extension, with the remainder coming from donations.
The gauge refers to the width between train rails. Most railways use a standard gauge of more than 1.2m but the Welsh Railway has a gauge of slightly less than 0.60m, which was cheaper to make and made turning corners easier.
Lewinn, who was a narrow gauge train driver for almost two decades, said he believed the finished line could contribute between £15 million and £20 million to the economy each year by drawing as many as 250,000 tourists a year to the region.
The extended line will be a boon to Caernarfon, the town's mayor, Tudor Owen, said.
"When people come here it's something for them to do, and that's what we want."
But not everyone is happy about the prospect of more people coming to visit their picturesque region.
"Caernarfon is a town with a glorious past and an uncertain future ... the Welsh Highland Railway might be of use in bringing in a few short-stay visitors, but it should not be looked upon as a salvation to cure all the town's ills," said local historian T. Meirion Hughes.
Caernarfon's jobless rate is around twice as high as Britain's overall 4.7 per cent.
The town relies heavily on drawing tourists to see the castle, built by King Edward I on the site of a Norman stronghold.
The railway has long had its detractors, not least because it fell so spectacularly out of favour just after its creation.
In 1934, Ffestiniog Railway attempted unsuccessfully to revive the line by taking over its lease.
But during World War II, tracks were pulled up and trains were demolished as part of the war effort.
The railway, which had operated at a loss since opening to the public, fell into disuse for the next 50 years until the Ffestiniog Railway once again came to the rescue with a plan to rebuild the line from Caernarfon to Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Train enthusiasts are excited by the latest expansion plans.
"This is one of the best scenic routes we've been on. It's excellent," said Bill Swindell who drove with his wife for two and a half hours from their home in Derbyshire to ride the rail to Rhyd Ddu from Caernarfon.
The class NGG16 Beyer-Garratt locomotive he rode was the last to be manufactured out of Manchester, once the cradle of English heavy industry, and was then exported to South Africa.
Ten years ago, Ffestiniog Railway bought back the train.
"It's the last to be built. It's really something," said Mike Jewell, a driver for the Welsh Highland Railway.
- Reuters
* Information about the Ffestiniog Railway is at www.festrail.co.uk
* General information on visiting Wales is at www.visitwales.com
