In the Americas, observation cars such as the one above are a common feature on their more picturesque routes, such as trans-Rocky and Canadian. In this small country of ours, however, we also have extremely picturesque routes and one of those is the track which winds between Llandudno and Blaenau Ffestiniog. Currently, Arriva run a couple of trains at peak times before there's a gap of about three hours between successive runs for the remainder of the day.
Now, folk are paying a fair whack to travel on the old coach which runs around the Orme, and this run is so successful that shortly Arriva will be mounting an open-top bus service on a regular schedule.
People love trains, however; there's something indefinably magic about them , so there may well be a market for a tourist train running between Llandudno and Blaenau, particularly now that the Welsh Highland track has been significantly extended. With a little co-operation and imagination, folk could buy a narrow and main gauge rover ticket, and spend a week exploring the area on normal and narrow gauge trains. A real incentive to visitors would,. however, be the addition of an observation car to the normal Arriva valley line train. This is a great time for investment and imagination; all the indicators are telling us that more people want to spend their money in the UK this year; how about making it worth their while?
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