Railways and Industry on the Vale of Neath: Pontypool Road-Crumlin Viaduct-Hengoed-Nelson and Llancaiach-Treharris, Taff Vale Extension

By John Hodge

This book covers the Vale of Neath line, the eastern portion of which was originally the Taff Vale Extension line, opened in the mid 19th Century, and taking in all the locations in this first book. It was unique in South Wales railway history as it was the only line running east to west across several of the valley lines which ran north to south, with connecting junctions into and from each. The line was famous for the iconic Crumlin Viaduct, hailed as one of the best examples of technological achievement during the Industrial Revolution and lasting 107 years until the line was closed as a through route in 1964. The line ran through several important valley towns, creating need for High Level and Low Level stations at several locations. The standard gauge Taff Vale Extension originally ran as far as Mountain Ash where it met and amalgamated with the broad gauge Vale of Neath line from Neath to Aberdare and Merthyr, locations that will be dealt with in future volumes. Fortunately the line was well photographed as the coverage given to each location will show.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Jun 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781399031394

John Hodge

JOHN HODGE is a former railway manager during the 1960s who, since retirement in 1992, has produced many articles and books on South Wales railways.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The Vale of Neath eventually described the length of railway running between Pontypool Road in the east and Neath in the west, but its history tells a far more complicated story. The original Vale of Neath Railway, opened in 1851 as a broad gauge line, ran between Merthyr/Aberdare and Neath/ Swansea Docks, and in 1857 was joined by the new Taff Vale Extension (TVE), a standard gauge line from Pontypool Road to Mountain Ash, built as an extension to the Newport, Abergavenny & Hereford line. Both owners produced claims as to the advantage of both gauges but the transhipment of traffic necessary would have been of the most onerous kind, given that the staple traffic of both concerns was coal, and the narrower gauge was gaining the ascendancy. The companies struggled with this difficult existence until a mixed gauge was adopted in 1864 and then huge relief would have been afforded by the conversion of all tracks in South Wales to the standard narrower gauge in 1872.

The Great Western absorbed the Vale of Neath company and the Taff Vale Extension in 1863 and quickly saw the potential to link the line with each of the valleys crossed, such that the line gradually acquired up to a dozen junctions with other Great Western and private company Valley lines, which would all become part of the GW in the Grouping of 1922. The Vale of Neath line (as the GW now called it throughout) became the most complicated route on their system with branches to and from the Western Valley and Ebbw Vale via:

Crumlin Junction (thence to the LNWR via Brynmawr)

Hall’s Road Line via Penar Junction to the Western Valley line at Crosskeys

Sirhowy Valley (north) via Sirhowy Jct., Bird-in-Hand West Junction to Tredegar and

London & North Western Railway

Sirhowy Valley (south) via Sirhowy Junction to Risca and Newport

Brecon & Merthyr (north) via Maesycwmmer Junction

Rhymney Valley via Hengoed Junction to Rhymney, Caerphilly and Cardiff

Taff Bargoed (north) via Nelson & Llancaiach to Dowlais

Taff Vale (Merthyr line) via Quakers Yard East Junction to Merthyr

GW & Rhymney Joint line to Merthyr via Quakers Yard West Junction

Taff Vale line to Abercynon, Pontypridd, Cardiff and Rhondda via Aberdare HL

Neath & Brecon line to Brecon via Neath N&B Junction

in addition to the multitude of connections into the colliery Internal Line in the Mountain Ash area and collieries and industrial concerns around Aberdare. Even by South Wales standards, the combined Vale of Neath was one complicated concern! This had also been represented in constructional terms, with the geological problems created by crossing the several valleys involving the building of the famous Crumlin Viaduct over the valley deep below it, and several tunnels and viaducts, with the ever-present problems of subsidence from colliery workings below the line. In addition, the Vale of Neath line had its own inbuilt junction at Gelli Tarw, east of Hirwaun where the line split off for the Aberdare coalfield, Aberdare itself and Merthyr.

Following the demise of Merthyr from its huge standing in the nineteenth century as the leading town in South Wales due to its iron production, Aberdare became the principal location along the line. In addition to a host of collieries, the Vale of Neath served a series of important smaller towns; Crumlin, Pontllanffraith, Hengoed, Nelson, Trelewis, Treharris, Quakers Yard (Morganstown), Penrhiwceiber, Mountain Ash, Aberdare, Hirwaun, Glyn Neath and Resolven, with the predominance of locations being at the east end of the line, in the original TVE territory. The many important small towns traversed might suggest potential for a thriving passenger service but, though this was true in the earlier years of the line’s existence, the spread of local bus services in the 1920s gradually proved more attractive in terms of frequency, cost and availability as they mostly ran through main streets whereas the railway could be rather remote in some places. Gradually, the main bus concerns, Western Welsh and Red and White, took the lion’s share of the business on offer and left the unattractive railway service with much discounted and free travel, school children and main line connection passengers, so much so that there were normally many empty seats on most of the trains running, except on Saturdays, train formations having to range from two to five coaches in later years to cater for the variations in loading. The whole position changed on Rugby International Saturdays in Cardiff when the railway came into its own in moving thousands of supporters from each of the valleys in special trains that I once had the pleasure of helping organise when I worked in the Cardiff District Passenger Train Office in the early 1960s.

The centre of activities along the line was Aberdare, which even in Victorian days was an important Great Western depot for engines and crews with through workings to a variety of destinations on the main line in the north and south. The GW viewed the Aberdare area with such importance for coal revenue that it even named a new class of freight engine after it – the Aberdare Class with engines in the 26XX number series. This was the area that provided much of the coal which fired the fleet in the First World War and was conveyed to Scapa Flow by the Jellicoe Specials running mainly from Pontypool Road to varying destinations in Scotland and the North West for servicing the fleet. Though Pontypool Road depot is always credited with running these trains from there to Warrington and Chester where they were handed over to the LNWR for onward conveyance, it seems very likely that Aberdare also ran these trains through without the need for staging at Pontypool, while Merthyr was involved for trains running north over the Brecon & Merthyr.

The vital junction connections between the Vale of Neath and the main Valley trunk lines were hugely important in the earlier years of the South Wales coal industry providing potential to run trains from a multitude of originating collieries mostly to Cardiff, Newport, Barry and Swansea Docks, though the original Vale of Neath line was built to serve Briton Ferry Dock and Neath wharves. As first export and then coastwise shipment coal declined with the greater use of oil, the volume of coal movement decreased and with the closure of uneconomic smaller mines and the development of larger deep mines, especially under NCB management, complex movements became less and less. In 1963, an NCB directive to make areas as self-sufficient as possible in matching supply with demand, reduced much of the longer distance movement of domestic and small industrial coal, leaving local flows to become larger and more regular with residual traffic flowing naturally through the main yards at Rogerstone and Radyr, the latter instrumental in catering for the closure of the line as a through route in 1964. In 1969, it even proved possible to dispense with Rogerstone as 95 per cent of the coal originating in the Western Valley was capable of being conveyed in block trains of 500 tons or more to the steelworks at Llanwern, Margam, Cardiff, Uskmouth Power Station and Barry Docks.

A huge amount of the steam coal produced in the Aberdare area went for use by the Great Western and, to a lesser degree, the Southern Railway, to its main depots in London and the West of England, and the abandonment of steam traction in the early 1960s by the Western Region especially caused potential problems for the coal industry in the Aberdare and Western Valleys. The challenge was met by two developments, firstly the opening of the Richard Thomas & Baldwin Llanwern Steelworks at Newport to where most of the previous locomotive coal in a newly blended and treated form was supplied as prime coking coal, with more also going to the Steel Company of Wales at Margam. Secondly, by the development of the Phurnacite Plant at Abercwmboi, just south of Aberdare on the line to Abercynon, and also on the NCB Internal Line. The Plant took very large volumes of duff in trainloads from the surrounding collieries, previously exported, for conversion to ovoids to supply the new smokeless zones set up by the government around London and the south-east, with new mechanised plants being set up by the likes of Charringtons to handle block trains of hoppers which ran through from Severn Tunnel and Margam Yards to the depot in many cases via Acton Yard. Thus, new markets were found for a significant volume of the coal displaced.

The decline in export coal through the South Wales ports had also been checked in 1963 with the concentration of all remaining export and coastwise bituminous coal traffic (the latter largely for the CEGB at their Thames-side powers stations) at Barry Docks, with anthracite (smokeless) continuing to be channelled through Swansea. But though facilities at Barry were excellent, demand fell continually until by the end of the decade the traffic had virtually ceased and coal began to be imported for the power stations at Didcot and Uskmouth and ultimately Aberthaw also. As markets contracted, the more uneconomic pits closed, together with those becoming life expired or where significant expenditure was necessary. Linking up of collieries underground took place at several locations, often removing the