Ceir gwyllt

The car gwyllt (plural: ceir gwyllt) is a Welsh invention used by quarrymen to ride downhill on the steep inclined planes of a slate quarry.

Most Welsh slate quarries were steep excavations into the mountains of Snowdonia, North Wales. They were worked as a series of horizontal levels or lefals, served by small 2 ft (610 mm) gauge railways, hauled by men, horses or locomotives. These levels were linked by a series of inclined planes. The inclines were worked by gravity: slate was quarried from the upper levels and descended the inclines on small rail wagons under its own weight. Slate was worked on the middle levels of the quarry, sawn into slabs or split into roofing slates. Waste could be dumped from these levels to form large waste tips. Finished or part-finished slates were then lowered to the lowest level by a further incline and then taken to market by a narrow gauge railway.

Some larger quarries were worked by quarrymen who lived in barracks on site during the week, others lived in villages below the quarry and travelled each day. Part of this journey was to ascend the inclines each morning, usually hauled up in empty wagons. Descending after work was a long, although downhill, walk.

At Graig Ddu Quarry near Blaenau Ffestiniog, quarrymen living in Manod found a way to speed their homeward journey. Rather than walking back down the inclines, they would use their car gwyllt to ride down them.

Craig Ddu had four inclines, with many workers in the sawing and dressing sheds below the upper incline. When the hooter of Oakeley Quarry sounded for the end of work at 4pm, there was a rush downhill to catch the bus from Bethania, along the valley to the other villages. The men could descend 1,000 feet, a distance of 1,800 yards including the walk between the two inclines, in around eight minutes.

After arriving at the foot of the last incline, the cars would be dropped into an empty wagon which would be raised back up the inclines during the next working day.

A further, lower, incline passed down through Bethania to the GWR slate loading sidings, although this was not part of the quarrymen's route home.

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Wikipedia