Former railway works buildings in Caerphilly

Caerphilly railway works in

Caerphilly Caerphilly (, ; cy, Caerffili, ) is a town and community in Wales. It is situated at the southern end of the Rhymney Valley. It is north of Cardiff and northwest of Newport. It is the largest town in Caerphilly County Borough, and lies wit ...

( cy, Caerffili) in the county of

Glamorgan , HQ = Cardiff , Government = Glamorgan County Council (1889–1974) , Origin= , Code = GLA , CodeName = Chapman code , Replace = * West Glamorgan * Mid Glamorgan * South Glamorgan , Motto ...

was the only main railway works in

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. It was built for the

Rhymney Railway The Rhymney Railway was a railway company in South Wales, founded to transport minerals and materials to and from collieries and ironworks in the Rhymney Valley of South Wales, and to docks in Cardiff. It opened a main line in 1858, and a limite ...

in 1899 and taken over by the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

at amalgamation in 1923. Much of its initial work was in refurbishing older

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the Power (physics), motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, Motor coach (rail), motor ...

s with new boilers and covered cabs. In 1906, C.H. Riches who had been at Gorton locomotive works became Locomotive Superintendent and appointed J.H. Sellars as Works Foreman. Their policy was to modernise and standardise the locomotive stock, and Riches designed a standard boiler and cylinders for all the railway's

tank engines A tank locomotive or tank engine is a steam locomotive that carries its water in one or more on-board water tanks, instead of a more traditional tender. Most tank engines also have bunkers (or fuel tanks) to hold fuel; in a tender-tank locomo ...

. He also designed a new class of

0-6-2 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and two trailing wheels on one axle. The type is sometimes known a ...

tank engine to be built by

Robert Stephenson and Company Robert Stephenson and Company was a locomotive manufacturing company founded in 1823 in Forth Street, Newcastle upon Tyne in England. It was the first company in the world created specifically to build railway engines. Famous early locomotiv ...

who had provided six of their own design in 1903. In 1919 Sellars became the Works Manager. Until 1922 the works only repaired its own locomotives, but they began to be sent from the

Barry Railway The Barry Railway Company was a railway and docks company in South Wales, first incorporated as the ''Barry Dock and Railway Company'' in 1884. It arose out of frustration among Rhondda coal owners at congestion and high charges at Cardiff Dock ...

and in 1924 the first Swindon-built locomotive arrived. The works was enlarged with a new erecting shop in 1926. The works also maintained a variety of wagons and passenger vehicles, building new mineral wagons and a few carriages, with a new workshop in 1901. However a new wagon works was built at

Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...

and, with work finishing its main work of converting Westinghouse air brakes to GWR

vacuum brake The vacuum brake is a braking system employed on trains and introduced in the mid-1860s. A variant, the automatic vacuum brake system, became almost universal in British train equipment and in countries influenced by British practice. Vacuum bra ...

s, the carriage and wagon works was phased out. However, in 1939 new workshops were built for carriage repairs only. Until 1952 only tank engines had been repaired, but the efficiency of the works was such that they were asked to handle the smaller two-cylinder tender engines. They were so successful that larger engines were sent, the first being the

4-6-0 A 4-6-0 steam locomotive, under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement, has four leading wheels on two axles in a leading bogie and six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles with the abse ...

Number 5955

Garth Hall Garth Vaughn Hall (born c. 1946) is a former American football coach. He served as the head football coach at Idaho State University from 1988 to 1991, compiling a record of 9–33. Hall was an assistant football coach at Brigham Young Universi ...

. Around 1958 Swindon was committed to

diesel locomotives A diesel locomotive is a type of railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engine. Several types of diesel locomotives have been developed, differing mainly in the means by which mechanical power is conveyed to the driving wheels ...

and Caerphilly was sent Castle class and BR Standard locomotives. With the withdrawal of steam on

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

ways, the works closed in 1963 and the site converted into an

industrial estate An industrial park (also known as industrial estate, trading estate) is an area zoned and planned for the purpose of industrial development. An industrial park can be thought of as a more "heavyweight" version of a business park or office park, ...

References

* * {{coord, 51, 34, 17, N, 3, 12, 14, W, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Railway workshops in Great Britain Defunct railway workshops Rhymney Railway Transport in Caerphilly Railway depots in Wales 1899 establishments in Wales 1963 disestablishments in Wales