Snaefell Mountain Railway

Snaefell Mountain Railway Raad-Yiarn Sniaull
Tram No. 4 at the summit
Overview
Termini	Laxey station Snaefell Summit station
Stations	3
Operation
Owner	Isle of Man Heritage Railways
Operator(s)	Isle of Man Heritage Railways
Depot(s)	Laxey (Snaefell) depot
Technical
Number of tracks	Double track
Track gauge	3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm)
Electrification	550 V DC overhead wire
Rack system	Fell mountain railway system

The Snaefell Mountain Railway (Manx: Raad-Yiarn Sniaull) is an electric mountain railway on the Isle of Man in Europe. It joins the village of Laxey with the summit of Snaefell, at 2,034 feet (620 m) above sea level the highest point on the island. It connects with the Manx Electric Railway (MER) in Laxey. The line is 5 miles (8.0 km) long, built to 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge and uses a Fell Incline Railway System centre rail for braking on the steep gradients. It is electrified using overhead wires at 550 volts direct current, with bow collectors.

Services operate at regular intervals between April and September, taking 30 minutes for a one-way journey. There is no winter service: the overhead wires on the exposed upper part of the route are dismantled to avoid damage from icing. All passenger traffic is carried in five wooden-bodied electric railcars, built in 1895 and numbered 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6. Car 3 was destroyed in 2016. Car 5 was burned out in an accident in 1970 and its body is a replacement built in 1971 to a similar design. The cars were re-equipped in the late 1970s with new bogies to a design based on the original, using motors and traction equipment from withdrawn Aachen trams. Because of the different gauge and the centre rail, vehicles cannot inter-run between the railway and the 3 ft gauge MER. Railway vehicles are occasionally worked to the MER workshops at Douglas by swapping their bogies, and to aid this there is a dual gauge siding in Laxey. The railway is owned and operated by Isle of Man Heritage Railways, a department of the Isle of Man Government.