In 1935, quarry workers in Porthmadog, North Wales, found an inventive way to travel without trains. After long shifts, they would speed down the quarry rail lines on homemade wooden trolleys called car gwyllt, or “wild cars,” built with a large central wheel, small front wheels, and a hand brake. Powered entirely by gravity, these makeshift vehicles carried workers nearly 1,800 yards downhill—dropping about 1,000 feet in only a few minutes. Newsreels of the time showed men riding the trolleys w