whr-russell

Welsh Highland Railway No. 2 Russell is a Hunslet-built 2-6-2T narrow-gauge tank locomotive built in 1906 for the Portmadoc, Beddgelert and South Snowdon Railway, subsequently operating on the original Welsh Highland Railway from its opening in 1923 until the railway's closure in 1936, and preserved at the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway in Porthmadog as the sole surviving locomotive from the original WHR era before the line's modern restoration by the Ffestiniog Railway. Russell gives a direct tangible link to the original Welsh Highland Railway — the impoverished inter-war line that struggled financially throughout its brief existence — and distinguishes the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway's focus on the original WHR history from the modern WHR operated by the FR Trust through the full Caernarfon–Porthmadog route.