User:Septerverius2/Building Conservation
The Conservation of Heritage Buildings on the Ffestiniog Railway[edit]
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The historical (heritage) buildings of the Ffestiniog Railway would have been built using traditional materials and methods of construction. The walls would be generally built solid using stone readily available in the locality which in this case is mostly slate or waste stone from the late quarrying process.
Roofs would have been covered, not surprisingly, in Ffestiniog slate. Often ridges and hips would have been protected with the patented interlocking slate ridge-tiles devised the Moses Kellow the manager of the Croesor Quarry. Examples of these can be view at Coed y Bleiddiau amongst other places.
The stonework used for building walls would have either been bedded in lime mortar or more probably in sedimentary soils which are ideal bedding material as they are soft when damp but harden when dry. They do however need to be kept dry and this would have been achieved by lime mortar pointing followed by multiple coats of limewash.
The timber used in roof and floor construction would have been softwood and it is reasonable to speculate that these softwoods would have been brought in by ship from far away places such as the Baltic. This theory will need to be further researched but in a predominantly oak and other broad-leafed tree forested area, softwoods would probably not have been widely available. It is known that the area was so deforested by the export of oak and other hardwoods by the 1820s that "..Porthmadog shipwrights began to use Mawddach timber instead, and later still supplies of Baltic and Canadian pine became available".(Historic Landscape Characterisation The Vale of Ffestiniog Historical processes and background Gwynedd Archaeological Trust).
Paint for protecting the external joinery and for internal woodwork would have been oil paints. These oil-based paints would have been prepared with white lead, linseed oil, turpentine and pigment, with the finish being regulated by altering the ratio of oil and turpentine. Traditional oil paint dried to a glossy finish that tended to dull down after a short time. Internal walls would probably have been painted with distemper in offices etc and limewash inside workshops.
The following is a list of traditional building materials used on the FR.