From the Merthyr Express 80 years ago today….
Merthyr Station and its Approaches
Tag: Vale of Neath Railway
Memories of Old Merthyr
We continue our serialisation of the memories of Merthyr in the 1830’s by an un-named correspondent to the Merthyr Express, courtesy of Michael Donovan.
Assuming ourselves at the junction of the Mardy and High Street, we will try to go (as many did during the turnpike gate days) around to Dowlais. The Star is on the right hand, a small house and shop on the left, the Mardy House being close, in fact the front garden touched the wall of Shop House, and Mardy House itself faced out to the High Street. This was the new front; a portion of the older part adjoined and had a thatched roof. It was occupied by a Mrs David Meyrick, I believe (Mr David Meyrick Having died there). Adjoining the Mardy was the residence of Mr Edmund Harman.
Gillar Street comes in, and on the opposite corner was a shop where (if not mistaken) Mr William Harris first opened on his own account; then the residence of Mr William Rowland, the parish clerk. At the making of the Vale of Neath Railway it was necessary to take part of his garden, and the navvies were annoyed at his troubling so much about some fruit trees. Naturally they would move them in the early hours of the day to avoid interference, but on one occasion he went out while they were doing so, and heard one of the navvies say to the other “Look out Jim; here’s the b_____ old Amen coming”. His wrath was not modified by the hearing of this, but that he did hear it is well known.
An opening into the Cae Gwyn followed, and the Fountain public house was upon the corner of the Tramroad. Upon the right side behind the Star were some five or six cottages, and after an opening was passed that came from Pendwranfach, the Court premises and Garden followed. The house itself has been improved since then, but it was always the parent house of the town. The Glove and Shears adjoined, and abutting on its gable was the Tramroad. Just here will be spoken of again in reference to the Tramroad. Now however, we will cross it and ascend the hill – Twynyrodyn.
Some not over good cottages lined a part of the way; there was a better residence on the right before coming to Zion, the Welsh Baptist Chapel, and opposite the chapel was the residence of the Rev Enoch Williams. Facing down the road just above was the White Horse public house, with a row of cottages with gardens in front. There were but few cottages beyond Zion Chapel on that side.
At the end of the White Horse, and behind the row of cottages, is the original ground used for burial of those who died from the cholera epidemic in the very early thirties (those who died at the subsequent visitation being buried in Thomastown, near the Union Workhouse).
The road had few if any cottages. In a dell, which may be called the end of Cwm Rhyd-y-bedd, there was one, and some a little further on to the left. The ‘Mountain Hare’ was the name of the public house built there adjoining the railroad leading from the Winch Fawr to the Penydarren Works.
To be continued at a later date…..
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.
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.
On 29 November 1971 Aberdare (High Level station) to Middle Duffryn was closed completely.
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.
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.
A Lovely Day Out
155 years ago today (8 October 1964)…..
Merthyr’s Bridges: Rhydycar Canal Bridge
One of Merthyr’s most distinctive, yet overlooked bridges is the Rhydycar Canal Bridge.
The Rhydycar Canal Bridge, or more precisely, the Vale of Neath Railway Bridge, was built in approximately 1850 to carry the Vale of Neath Railway over the Glamorganshire Canal. The Canal was the prime artery of trade linking the ironworks of Merthyr Tydfil with their markets via the port of Cardiff throughout the heyday of the iron industry, from the late 18th Century to the mid 19th Century. Construction of the Canal began at Merthyr in 1790, and it was opened in 1794. It was financed primarily by iron industry interests, among whom the Crawshay family of Cyfarthfa Ironworks were the leading shareholders.
With the growth of the railway industry, the importance of the canal began to wane as several companies brought lines into Merthyr. The Vale of Neath Railway Company built a line from Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare to Neath, chiefly to transport the products of the Merthyr iron industries to the port at Swansea. The line opened in 1851, and at Rhydycar, the two transport hubs intersected with the railway bridge over the canal.
The bridge, which was built on the site of an earlier bridge, is built of coursed rubble sandstone and brick. It is built on the skew, and comprises three arches. The central arch, which spanned the canal, is elliptical with a 5.5 metre span, and a height of 6.7 metres at its apex. This arch is flanked by two smaller arches which accommodated the towpath of the canal. There are also three access arches in each pier of the main arch, leading to the towpaths.
Following the closure of the railway, the bridge gradually fell in to disrepair. In 2009, it was announced that by Merthyr Council that the bridge would be repaired and renovated. The work was intended stabilise a large vertical crack and stonework. They also intended to return it to its historic setting in the canal basin by excavating an area to reveal the buried canal profile and repairing and reinstating the canal walls. However, these plans never came to fruition.
The bridge is now scheduled as a GradeII listed building as a now rare example of one of the early bridges on the important Glamorganshire Canal.
Railway Time Tables
Here are the Railway Time Tables for Merthyr from 162 years ago today…..
The Brecon and Merthyr Railway
By the second half of the 19th century, Merthyr was served by several railway companies, one of which was the Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway (B&M) which, as its name implies, ran from Brecon to Merthyr.
As early as 1836, Sir John Josiah Guest, of the Dowlais Ironworks, had written of his proposal to construct a railway linking Dowlais to the valley of the River Usk, and possibly also running into Brecon. The line would have pretty nearly covered the same route as was eventually adopted by the B&M. A similar proposal suggested a line running up the Taf Fawr valley over the Brecon Beacons via Storey Arms and thence to Brecon.
The Brecon and Merthyr Railway Company was established by a Bill of 1859, financially supported by several prominent Brecon citizens, and the complete route from Brecon to Merthyr Tydfil was authorised the following year. The first section to open was a 6.75 miles (10.86 km) section between Brecon and Talybont-on-Usk in 1863, which reused a section of a horse-drawn tram line. The Beacons Tunnel at Torpantau opened in 1868. Officially named the Torpantau Tunnel, at 1313 feet above mean sea level, it is the highest railway tunnel in Britain.
The system eventually came to comprise two sections of lines:
- The Southern section, effectively the consumed Rumney Railway, which linked Bassaleg (where there were connections with the GWR and the London and North Western Railway) and the ironworks town of Rhymney, near the head of the Rhymney Valley.
- The Northern section linked Deri Junction by means of running powers over a section of the Rhymney Railway in the Bargoed Rhymney Valley to Pant, Pontsticill and Brecon via a tunnel through the Brecon Beacons. From the tunnel the line descended towards Talybont-on-Usk on a continuous 1-in-38 gradient known as the “Seven-Mile Bank”. For southbound trains this presented the steepest continuous ascent on the British railway network.
Initially, the only connection to Merthyr Tydfil was by means of a horse-drawn bus from Pant, but by 1868, a connection with Merthyr at Rhydycar Junction had been established by sharing lines with Vale of Neath, London and North Western and Taff Vale railways. This involved the building of nearly seven miles of single line from Pontsticill to Merthyr, with an almost continuous descent of 1 in 45-50, two complete reversals of direction, and the construction of two viaducts to carry the line over the Taf Fechan at Pontsarn, and the Taf Fawr at Cefn Coed.
North of the Pontsarn viaduct, a connection was made with the LNWR’s Merthyr Extension line at Morlais Tunnel Junction from where the latter’s double track entered the 1034 yard Morlais Tunnel and beyond routed along the double line to Dowlais High Street and thence to Tredegar, Brynmawr and Abergavenny. The sections from Merthyr to Pontsticill and Bargoed through to Brecon were laid as single lines with passing loops and usually locomotive watering facilities at principal stations. For those single lines, tokens were issued to drivers from signal boxes at such locations and being essential for safe working over single lines.
The line was eventually amalgamated with the Great Western Railway in 1923, and by 1958, the line was running three services each way on weekdays, increasing to four on Saturdays, taking around 2½ hours to run from Brecon to Newport. Although surviving nationalisation, the service had run at a substantial loss for most of its lifetime, and was an obvious candidate for closure. Passenger services were closed from Pontsticill Junction to Merthyr Tydfil in November 1961, with the remainder of services stopping at the end of the 1962. The line was closed completely after the withdrawal of goods services in 1964.
Towards the end of the 1970s, a private company, the Brecon Mountain Railway, began to build a narrow-gauge steam-hauled tourist line on the existing 5.5-mile (8.9 km) trackbed from Pant through Pontsticill to Dol-y-gaer. The initial section of 1.75 miles (2.82 km) from Pant to Pontsticill first opened in June 1980. After more than 30 years of hard work and extra-funding, passenger services finally extended to Torpantau in April 2014, bringing the BMR to a total of approximately 5 miles in length.
For more about the Brecon Mountain Railway, please follow the link below: