The Padarn Railway was a narrow gauge railway in North Wales, built to the unusual gauge of . It carried slate from Dinorwic Quarry to Port Dinorwic. The line opened on 3 March 1843, replacing the Dinorwic Railway. It initially used horses, but was converted to steam haulage on 23 November 1848. The railway was formally titled the Dinorwic Quarries Railway or Dinorwic Quarry Railway, but informally "Padarn Railway" was widely used. The railway officially closed on 3 November 1961. The locomotive Dinorwic performed the last practical services by hauling the track-lifting trains. Transporter wagons An unusual feature of the railway was the transporter wagons, also referred to as "Host wagons" and to the workmen by the English names "Big Cars" or "Large Trolleys". These gauge vehicles were flat wagons with two parallel "Quarry Gauge" – – tracks on them. Without loads these vehicles resembled modern day "Container Flats". Loaded Quarry Gauge slate wagons were wheeled onto the transporter wagons and carried four per transporter wagon down to their destination at Penscoins, above Port Dinorwic, where they were wheeled off again onto a Quarry Gauge rope-hauled (until May 1924 chain-hauled) incline which led down, partly through a tunnel, to the quayside. Workmen's transport As with many other aspects of the Industrial Revolution, the rapid growth of slate quarrying required a lot of labour concentrated in small areas where, typically, little had been needed before. This required new or expanded towns, commuting, or both. Llanberis grew considerably through the first part of the 19th century, but not sufficiently to keep pace with the opportunities the quarries offered. The first "mass transport" commuting to and from Dinorwic's quarries was by boat across Llyn Peris and, especially, Llyn Padarn, with an estimated 26 boats involved. "Weekly commuting" began and lasted until the Second World War, notably by "The Anglesey Men" who crossed the Menai Strait from Craig-y-Don to Port Dinorwic on Mondays, lodged in "barracks" at the quarry and returned home on Saturday afternoons. It was common across North Wales for quarry owners to tolerate the widespread practice among quarry workers to devise rail vehicles to get to, from and around work. Such vehicles were known generally as "ceir gwyllt" or "wild cars". Dinorwic was no exception. From 1850 at the latest men were permitted to travel to and from work along the Padarn Railway using "velocipedes" – large, four-wheeled trucks propelled by