Aberdare Tunnel – The Melting Pot

The Vale of Neath Railway

The Vale of Neath Railway was built to connect the industrial centres of Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare to Neath to carry iron from Merthyr and coal from Aberdare, and then on to the docks at Swansea.

With the expansion of the railway network in South Wales and authorisation of the broad gauge South Wales Railway, which ran from Chepstow via Neath to Swansea, new opportunities arose for further expansion to capitalise on the industrial boom. Up until the 1840s, all the iron produced in Merthyr was transported via the docks at Cardiff.

H S Coke, the Town Clerk of Neath, and a solicitor by profession, was the driving force in promoting the idea of a railway following the River Neath, and connecting Merthyr with Neath; at Neath there would be the alternatives of onward railway transport on the South Wales Railway, or transfer to ships on the river. On 21 May 1845 he put his ideas to the provisional directors of the South Wales Railway. They were supportive, providing that Coke’s railway was also on the broad gauge system.

His intended route was from Neath up the relatively gentle valley as far as Glyn Neath; from there the line was to climb much more steeply and penetrate the mountain at the watershed, then descending the Cynon Valley to Cwmbach (near Aberdare) and turning north-east pass through another mountain by a long tunnel to reach Merthyr. There would be a branch to Aberdare itself.

The Bill for the line went to the 1846 session of Parliament; Brunel as engineer gave evidence to the committees. He was questioned in detail about the gradients on the line, as the steep and lengthy gradients were not considered suitable for mineral lines. Brunel’s persuasive evidence carried the matter through, and the Vale of Neath Railway was authorised by Act of Parliament of 3 August 1846. Share capital was to be £550,000.

The first section to be opened was the main line from Neath to Gelli Tarw Junction, and the branch from there to Aberdare. Finally on 23 September 1851 a ceremonial opening train for directors and their friends ran from Neath to Aberdare. There were stations at Neath, jointly with the South Wales Railway, Aberdulais, Resolven, Glyn Neath, Hirwain, Merthyr Road, and Aberdare. Merthyr Road was the station for reaching Merthyr by a road connection.

The ordinary public service started on 24 September 1851, with three trains each way daily, two on Sundays. The journey time was 70 minutes.

Passenger traffic was immediately buoyant, but at first wharves at Briton Ferry were not ready to receive coal trains; the company had been relying on these. Moreover, there was a problem with silting at Swansea, so it was not until April 1852 that coal traffic was started. Ordinary goods traffic had started in December 1851.

The extension of the railway to Merthyr was delayed by the major engineering task of building a tunnel between Aberdare and Merthyr. In 1845, Isambard Kingdom Brunel had surveyed and prepared parliamentary plans for the Vale of Neath Railway, and these involved a 2,497-yard hole through the hill between Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare, the second longest of Wales’ tunnels. 650 feet below ground at its deepest point. The tunnel, and subsequently the main line opened on 2 November 1853, with its terminus at the grand Central Merthyr Station, designed by Brunel.

Merthyr Railway Station in the 1950s. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

In 1854 to 1857 further branches were opened from Gelli Tarw into the Dare and Amman valleys. These were only used for goods traffic, but included the Dare Viaduct, one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s famous timber viaducts.

Almost the whole of the Vale of Neath system had a third rail added to its tracks in 1863. This mixed gauge allowed the Great Western Railway to run standard gauge trains from Hereford through to Swansea over a connection at Middle Duffryn.

The broad gauge rail was removed after the South Wales Railway was converted to standard gauge on 11 May 1872, although by this time the Vale of Neath Railway had been amalgamated with the Great Western Railway, this happening on 1 February 1865.

The line depended for its business on coal mining, and as that industry declined, so the railway came into question. The Merthyr line passenger service was ended on 31 December 1962, and the main line lost its passenger service from 15 June 1964, and Glyn Neath to Hirwaun closed completely on 2 October 1967.

One of the last trains entering the Aberdare Tunnel on 29 December 1962. Photo courtesy of the Alan George archive.

On 29 November 1971 Aberdare (High Level station) to Middle Duffryn was closed completely.

The last train from Hirwaun to Merthyr waiting to leave Hirwaun Station on 29 December 1962. Photo courtesy of Keith Lewis-Jones

Merthyr’s Bridges: Court Street Railway Bridge

Following on from the previous couple of posts concentrating on Court Street, here is another of Merthyr’s Bridges.

Court Street Railway Bridge

In 1851 the Vale of Neath Railway was constructed to carry goods from the Merthyr Ironworks to Neath, and then onto Swansea for export by sea. The line originally stopped at Aberdare, but with the construction of the Aberdare/Merthyr Tunnel the line finally reached Merthyr in 1853.

The Court Street Railway Bridge was built in 1852 to carry the new line to Merthyr Station, over the main parish road to Twynyrodyn.

The original bridge was built on a slight skew and had three spans – the main central span for road traffic of 24 ft 9in, and two smaller side spans for pedestrians of 8ft each. The bridge was built with dressed stone abutments and piers, with a wrought iron ‘trough’ across them to carry the railway.

The original bridge. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

From the time of its construction, the bridge was prone to problems with large volumes of water coming off the bridge on to the traffic below. The Vale of Neath Railway, and later the Great Western Railway (when they took over the Vale of Neath line) continually tried to rectify the problem, but without success.

In 1938, the GWR requested permission to reconstruct the bridge, but this was denied. In 1946 however, permission was granted for the bridge to be modified, with a single trestle being built in place of the side piers. As a result of this modification, only one pedestrian footpath could now be used due to the base of the trestle being built on the other side.

In 1963, British Rail and Merthyr Borough Council agreed that a new bridge should finally be built to accommodate the increase, and type of traffic using the roadway. Work began in 1965, with the removal of the old urinal at the bridge, and the road was lowered to provide more headroom for traffic. The new single-span bridge, built of masonry abutments and stressed concrete beams was opened in 1967, and the bridge is still in use today.

Railway Accident at Merthyr Station

143 years ago today, on the afternoon of Saturday 16 May 1874, a scheduled passenger train left Brecon for Merthyr at 1.50pm, and following a few unavoidable delays arrived just after 3.25pm, eight minutes late, at the Great Western Railway Station at Merthyr Tydfil. The train was just reaching the end of the inner platform when it was hit by great force from behind by twenty-one fully-laden coal trucks.

At approximately 3.00pm that afternoon, a coal train of twenty-four fully-laden trucks had left the same platform at the Station heading for Swansea. At that time it was the policy of the Great Western Railway Company to work mineral trains going up the incline to the Aberdare Tunnel with an extra engine at the rear or at the front of the train to help propel the train up the incline. On this day, the train that had left Merthyr station was in one of these latter configurations.

On such occasions, it was the duty of the guards to be at separate positions at each end of the train to help operate the brakes with the brake-man. For some reason, the guard on this particular train was travelling with his colleague in the engine at the front, leaving the brake-man alone in the rear van. Shortly after the train had entered the Aberdare Tunnel, a coupling somewhere near the front of the train broke. The guards were alerted to this by the fact that the front part of the train suddenly accelerated. Having brought the train to a standstill the guards ran back along the track to find that more than half the train – twenty-one trucks in all had become detached from the train and had run back along the line on which they had just travelled. Between the Great Western Station and the Aberdare Tunnel, the railway line rises over three-quarters of a mile in a series of inclines ranging between 1 in 45 and 1 in 70 gradients, so this, coupled with the weight of the loads being carried, meant that the runaway trucks were accelerating the whole time along the track. The train was travelling at such a speed that the signalman at the Cyfarthfa Crossing and another signalman at the Rhydycar Junction, just half a mile from the station, were powerless to do anything to stop the train’s progress or to warn those at the Great Western Station.

Within minutes the trucks hit the passenger train. It is estimated that they were, by this time, travelling in excess of 40 miles an hour. They hit the passenger train with a force of approximately 300 tons of deadweight travelling at a mile a minute, and the sound of the crash was heard over a 300 yard radius. The force of the impact smashed the passenger coaches and forced the locomotive engine ‘The Elephant’ through the buffers at the end of the track, across the platform at the end of it, through the front of the station and into the road beyond before finally crashing into the high retaining wall at John Street, penetrating the wall to a depth of about four feet and damaging the foundations of the Grosvenor Hotel in John Street.

The first carriage on the train, immediately behind the engine tender, took the main force of the concussion that travelled along the train, and it was reduced to splinters, the only portion left for identification being the framework which was embedded beneath the guard’s van. Fortunately there were no passengers in this carriage – it is obvious that if there had been anyone in the carriage they would have been killed outright. Next was a composite (a mixed first and second class) carriage which came to rest on top of the guard’s van, amazingly the only damage this carriage sustained was broken windows and doors, and passengers in this carriage sustained only minor injuries, two further third-class carriages followed this, but the final third-class carriage which took the main brunt of the collision was almost totally demolished. It was in this carriage that most of the injuries occurred.

In all 52 people were badly injured, most people suffering from fractures and cuts and bruises. A large number of people also suffered from the effects of shock. The most serious injuries were sustained by the recently married Mrs Stephens of Pontypridd who suffered serious fractures to both legs, resulting in them both being amputated below the knee.

Miss Sarah Davies of Coed-cae Court, Twynyrodyn, also sustained fractures to both legs and needed one of her legs amputated below the knee. Mrs Elizabeth Morgan, aged 30, of Cefn Coed, also had both legs fractured and needed one leg amputated below the knee. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the doctors, Mrs Morgan’s injuries were far worse than originally thought, and she died of her injuries a week after the accident. It is miraculous that this was the only fatality. The driver of the train, David Humphreys, along with the stoker and the guard, managed to jump from the engine just as it crashed through the end of the station and sustained only minor injuries.

An artist’s impression of the crash from 1874

If you want to find out more, a fuller account of the crash appears in Merthyr Historian volume 26.