Immediately after leaving Beddgelert the trackbed passes through a cutting bridged by a footpath (the bridge had recently been renewed in the left-hand picture below) followed by a short tunnel.

Immediately after the tunnel comes a sharp turn to the right, whereas the PB&SSR route would have gone straight on, across the road bridge.

Only a short section of the PB&SSR embankment was completed, immediately beyond the road bridge. However stone abutments were built for a never-completed bridge which would have linked the pasture that would have been divided by the embankment.

Beyond a never-completed river crossing, the PB&SSR trackbed on the east side of the Glaslyn remains visible, though parts of it have been obliterated by concrete paths laid by the National Trust more or less on the original alignment. Jim Hewett's pictures below show this section from north to south.

Back on the WHR trackbed, and on the west wide of the Glaslyn, the picture below is looking back towards the tunnel, which is out of view to the left.

The line now passes along the edge of the village cemetery, crossing its roadway, and runs roughly parallel to and a little above the A4085 road. In the right-hand picture, showing an accommodation crossing a little further on, the trackbed is the green line heading into the distance.

Road and railway then swing sharply to the left, and the railway drops sharply to pass under the road and, a few yards beyond, cross the Afon Glaslyn at Bryn y Felin.

The girder bridge here was in a dangerous condition (and had been closed to walkers by Gwynedd Council for some time, though it was not unusual to observe determined individuals endangering themselves nonetheless by clambering across the obstructions) and has been demolished; the concrete abutments remain.

It is believed that this bridge and two similar ones further south were a proprietary design for use in India; the steelwork had deteriorated, not least because the old WHR never acted on an inspector's recommendation to drill holes to allow water to drain away from the girder webs, and also never painted the steelwork! More recently, the condition of this bridge's footings on its abutments had reached the stage that it was a question of when, rather than if, it would fall into the river. The structure will be replaced by an entirely new one when work reaches this section. A new footbridge has been built adjacent to this site, on the upstream side.

The trackbed now turns right and heads into the scenic jewel of the Welsh Highland - the steep and narrow Aberglaslyn Pass. The line runs above the fast-flowing Afon Glaslyn, the trackbed on a ledge cut into the rock, passing through two short tunnels before turning away from the river through a longer tunnel.

The object visible on the trackbed in the right-hand picture above (since removed) was a base for a World War 2 Home Guard grenade launcher; another stood on the trackbed at Plas y Nant.

Subsequent to the railway works at Aberglaslyn, the National Trust (which owns the land either side of the trackbed) has been carrying out significant improvements to the Fishermen's Path, which runs below the level of the railway and emerges onto the road adjacent to Pont Aberglaslyn, after the railway has veered off in the other direction through the long tunnel. While more would need to be done at a rock outcrop on this path to make it as accessible as the former unofficial through route along the trackbed, these works are helping to open up Aberglaslyn (as it will be after railway restoration reaches the Pass) to a wider range of walkers.

The photo-montage below gives an idea of how the rebuilt railway will look in the Aberglaslyn Pass (montage by Bruce Brayne, from pictures by Barrie Hughes and Ben Fisher), though loco no. 138 is unlikely to be seen here in its 1997 livery...

Beyond the last and longest of the tunnels, the trackbed crosses the narrow valley of Cwm Bychan by an embankment and small bridge (pictures above and below).

A walk up Cwm Bychan leads to the remains (conserved by the National Park) of the upper terminus of the aerial ropeway built for a brief 1920s revival of some of the valley's copper workings, which date back to the 18th Century - another reminder of the industrial past of Snowdonia.

The trackbed now passes through a series of deep rock cuttings on the approach to Nantmor, a small village once served by a halt popular with visitors in the 1920s and 1930s. The line crossed the village road on the level, with the halt immediately on the Porthmadog side.

The trackbed runs above and parallel to the A4085 through and past Nantmor, variously on an embankment which seems to have suffered some erosion, and through further rock cuttings.

The (then) 1964 Company stored track materials at the southern end of this stretch in the 1960s; John Kimberley's picture below shows the scene in 1974.

There were still rails to be seen here in 2004, as seen below. They were undisturbed by early clearance work in 2005.

From here the trackbed loses height towards sea level, on land reclaimed from the sea in the early 19th Century. The embankment running downhill from Nantmor to the level of the reclaimed fields is a prominent feature. At the right-hand (Nantmor) side of the picture below, the railway crosses over the A4085 for the only time (at all their other encounters, the road crosses over the railway).

The bridge has received a new deck; the old one was badly corroded, as seen below.

South of the Nantmor embankment, the trackbed is in use as an access track for some distance, running to the immediate west of the wooded bluff of Coed Hafod y Llyn, and parallel to the Aberglaslyn-Tremadog road, which lies on the opposite side of the Afon Glaslyn. There is a short section where railway and river run very close together (left); the old Hafod y Llyn halt lay a short distance beyond (right), at a point where the trackbed later became a farm access road.

This will not present a problem after this short section, where the trackbed emerges onto the Glaslyn's floodplain. For the southbound passenger, this will be where the view first opens out towards Traeth Mawr and the sea, whereas for the northbound passenger, the approach to the mountains will become evident.

At Hafod y Llyn Isaf the farm access track leaves the trackbed. There may have been a halt (possibly informal) here, which confusingly has been named Hafod Garregog by some sources; this name was in fact given to a halt further on (below). This site appears as Hafod y Llyn halt on construction maps and is a candidate for a future halt adopting the name of the old one further north.

Shortly beyond this point there are two small river crossings (Afon Nanmor and Afon Dylif) by - the original light girder bridges (similar to that at Bryn y Felin) were demolished in 1999 and replaced by new ones in 2007. Hafod Garregog halt lay between the two, and the rails that supported the nameboard remain. If ever reopened it will be spelt Hafod Garegog to reflect current spelling of the property it takes its name from. The halt was to be called Ynysferlas, but this was changed before opening in 1923.

The line passes the all but invisible site of Croesor Junction, from where the upper part of the old Croesor Tramway led up to slate quarries a few miles distant. Its seaward end forms the WHR route from this point to Porthmadog. The site of the junction lies to the left of the farm buildings in the middle distance in the picture below, and it has been bypassed slightly by the rebuilt railway to ease the curve.

Some way further on, the trackbed crosses the Afon Glaslyn once more on a bridge shared with the B4410 road, Pont Croesor, between the villages of Llanfrothen and Prenteg. The bridge piers that carried the railway remain visible beside the road.

The line runs through farmland as it approaches the outskirts of Porthmadog. Just under a mile beyond Pont Croesor, there was a loop at Portreuddyn in Croesor Tramway days. A short distance on lies Traeth Mawr loop, a temporary feature installed for the opening of extended WHR (Porthmadog) services in Spring 2007.

At this point the trackbed takes up the line of the Creassy Embankment of 1800, the first part of William Alexander Madocks' land reclamation on the Traeth Mawr, named after the engineer James Creassy, who advised Madocks on the project. It reclaimed over a thousand fertile acres between here and the Tremadog crags, but was rendered redundant by the completion of the Cob a dozen years later. The sandy bank of the earlier embankment is much eroded by time, wind, and perhaps because it was a ready source of sand; the first two pictures below show the western end of its surviving section; it originally continued through what is now the WHR(P) site, but this end is long gone. In the middle picture below, the orange mesh visible in the distance marks where WHR(P) volunteers were carrying out excavation work north of Cynfal Crossing on the extension (right-hand picture).

The view below is from this occupation crossing, and shows the trackbed in use as a "haul road" for WHR(P) extension works, with a load of spoil being removed. In the background the site compound adjacent to Pen y Mount Station can be seen, across another accommodation crossing, with the Bagnall loco Sinembe also just visible.

Approaching Porthmadog the trackbed runs parallel for a distance with the existing WHR (Porthmadog) line operated by the WHR Ltd., passing its Pen y Mount station (not a station on the original line; the name comes from the adjacent farm). In the view below (photo by Geoff Jenkins, reproduced by kind permission of the WHR[P] website) the station building (a faithful replica of the original from Nantmor) is seen under construction; the original trackbed lies on the far side.

Looking the other way (towards Porthmadog), the left and centre views below show the point where the present extremity WHR(P) line meets the original trackbed. The right-hand view (looking towards Pont Croesor, with Cnicht in the distance) shows the trackbed immediately beyond the level crossing that will be needed at Pen y Mount, with preliminary clearance for surveying purposes done by WHR Ltd volunteers in August 2000.

Pen y Mount is destined to become a junction, where trains from the North will either bear left along the original route towards the FR's Harbour Station, or right to terminate at the WHR Ltd. station site. The first piece of tracklaying on the WHR(P) Pont Croesor extension includes the junction point (supplied by WHLR Ltd), seen below soon after it was laid during the July-August 2002 Civils' Week. The view is towards Porthmadog; trains for Harbour will pass to the left of the Pen y Mount station building in the middle distance, whereas the WHR(P) line runs to its right.

By the end of October 2004 ballasting was completed from Traeth Mawr back to Pen y Mount, where just the length of the level crossing site separated the existing WHR(P) line from the extension (left and right of the first picture below). On the far side of the junction point, a short length of temporary track had been laid on what would become the northern end of the Cross-Town Link, or "Harbour Siding" in local parlance. This was to be used for loading rails from a stack to be established alongside, for tracklaying northwards.

In the view below just south of Pen y Mount, the site of the old WHR trackbed forms the path on the left. On the right, Russell passes with a WHR(P) train heading for Pen y Mount. The WHR Ltd line is laid on the site of former standard gauge interchange sidings known as the Beddgelert Siding, where Croesor slate was transferred to the Cambrian Railways; the name dates back to the proposed standard gauge Beddgelert Railway of the 1860s, which never amounted to more than a few earthworks on the Traeth.

Curving away from the WHR(P) line beside its Gelert's Farm Works, the trackbed crosses the standard-gauge Cambrian Coast Line on the level, and reaches the derelict site of the original joint WHR/FR station of 1923, Portmadoc New - seen below, looking towards the Ffestiniog Railway's Harbour Station; only the base of the water tower remains. The large building in the right-hand view is the town's former flour mill, once served by the last remnant of the Gorseddau line.

The route of the Porthmadog cross-town link with the Ffestiniog Railway's Harbour Station is mostly that of the Croesor Tramway, and passes through the largely non-residential north-eastern edge of the town. It will include two level crossings controlled by traffic lights, the first being across Snowdon Street, seen below on the approximate line of the railway, looking away from Harbour towards the site of Portmadoc (New). This was at present the exit of the town's main tourist car park; a new exit has been created which will not generate extra traffic across the level crossing.

From this point on there is a deviation from the historic route, which crossed the site of what is now the main tourist car park, and passed the present frontage of the Pioneer supermarket, emerged into Madoc Street and thence on to the High Street. The new route will be far less intrusive than the original would be under modern traffic conditions, and keeps the length of street running to the minimum practicable. The deviation will pass beside the edge of the car park adjacent to Llyn Bach (the town's never-completed inner harbour), behind the supermarket, and will join the road at the Britannia Bridge, at much the spot shown below. In the background, Welsh Pony can be seen on its plinth at Harbour (loco removed March 2002), illustrating the shortness of the street section, where movements of trains and road traffic will be controlled by lights. Although some remodelling will be required, strengthening of the bridge in the 1990s will allow it to carry trains once more, and the surface provided is suitable for the installation of tramway-style track flush with the road surface.

Concern has been expressed in some quarters that train operations at this point will have undesirable effects on road traffic, but it has been demonstrated that given the suggested railway timetable and the short time needed to clear the crossing, the overall effects will be significantly less than those already caused by the nearby pedestrian crossing, and indeed there should be benefits for pedestrians at this busy spot. Also, the Cambrian Coast Line's level crossing on the same road at the other end of town causes no delays of any significance.