After A LOT of wrangling with various apps, I’ve animated the first six hours of operation of the railway. This starts at 4:20 in the morning and shows the morning rush hour before a more relaxed timetable begins at 10am.

There were two trains running at any one time. A shuttle train runs backwards and forwards between Birkirkara and Valletta for most of the morning, making ten journeys before heading up to Mdina. This may have been hauled by one of the original locomotives that had less power to take heavy loads up to Mdina. At the same time, another train slugs up and down between the two termini. It’s a pretty intensive timetable!

Trains all pass each other at Hamrun. At this date Birkirkara hadn’t yet been rebuilt and enlarged, possibly limiting longer trains from passing here. Another thing to note is how little time trains had at either end of the line to uncouple the locomotives and run them round to the other end of the train before setting off again: just 4mins on occasion!

I had hoped to show an entire day, but it became too time consuming. There are some movements at about lunchtime that suggest train 2 at least may have had its engine swapped at Hamrun for a more powerful loco before the afternoon services. There is one error that’s mine and one that seems to crop-up from the original timetable.