ABSTRACT
The first named train in the history of the railways in Britain was the Irish Mail. Its first journey was made in the late summer of 1848 with the opening of the Chester & Holyhead Railway, one of the earliest and greatest achievements in the creation of the British railway system, for Parliament had only agreed to its construction in 1844. In the space of four years the most difficult terrain so far encountered by the railway builders had been conquered by a team of as many as 12 000 navvies. The Menai Strait and the tidal mouth of the Conwy River had been crossed by bridges of a highly original design, the track concealed in cast iron tubes, and tunnels driven through bold headlands at Penmaenbach and Penmaenmawr. Today, a journey along the route of the Irish Mail as it follows the shores of the Dee leads to a string of holiday resorts. Prestatyn with its golf and caravans is followed by Rhyl, a place of funfairs and day-trippers. Colwyn Bay, retirement bungalows and late Victorian villas, stands isolated from its seaside by the embankments thrown up by those bold engineers long before the speculators from Manchester began the building of a town in the 1860s.
