The Maerdy Branch was a

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

branch line A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Industrial spur An industri ...

South Wales South Wales ( cy, De Cymru) is a loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, south Wales extends westwards ...

. Financed and operated by the

Taff Vale Railway The Taff Vale Railway (TVR) was a standard gauge railway in South Wales, built by the Taff Vale Railway Company to serve the iron and coal industries around Merthyr Tydfil and to connect them with docks in Cardiff. It was opened in stag ...

, on amalgamation it became part of 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 ...

in 1923. Designed and mainly operated as a

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

freight Cargo consists of bulk goods conveyed by water, air, or land. In economics, freight is cargo that is transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. ''Cargo'' was originally a shipload but now covers all types of freight, including transp ...

railway, its creation and demise was wholly defined by the

South Wales Coalfield The South Wales Coalfield ( cy, Maes glo De Cymru) extends across Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen. It is rich in coal deposits, espec ...

Design

The branch was wholly designed, being developed from integrating a series of private industrial track railways with the extension of the Taff Vale Railway from the south at . In 1840, the TVR bought the private Ferndale to Maerdy colliery track, and then extended to it from from 1849.

Operations

Passenger operations began in 1875, serving interim stations from Porth at (opened 1876),

Pontygwaith Pontygwaith (Welsh,"Bridge to work" or "Bridge of the Ironworks") is a village in the Taff Valley, south of Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. A Sussex Ironmaster named Anthony Morley set up a small ironworks here in 1583. On 21 February 1804 Richard T ...

Tylorstown Tylorstown (Pendyrus) is a village and community located in the Rhondda valley, in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. It is neighboured by the villages of Blaenllechau, Ferndale, Penrhys, Pontygwaith and Stanleytown. History B ...

, and Ferndale. Though the line had opened up to Maerdy the same year (with the sinking & commissioning of

Mardy Colliery Maerdy Colliery was a coal mine located in the South Wales village of Maerdy ( cy, Y Maerdy), in the Rhondda Valley, located in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, and within the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan, Wales. Opened in 187 ...

), it was not until 1889 that the passenger service was extended there from Ferndale. Passenger traffic was neither heavy nor a major contribution to line finances, and so in 1900 the GWR introduced steam rail motors. Ten or eleven return trips each weekday was the standard service frequency for the branch for most of its life.

Closure

The last passenger train ran on 13 June 1964 as a result of the

Beeching cuts The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised British Rail, railway system in Great Britain. The plan was outlined in two reports: ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' (1963) and ''The Develop ...

, leaving only the freight service to Mardy Colliery. As a result, the line was reduced to single track working. The line was placed into maintenance only upkeep from June 1986 and subsequently closed completely in August that year, after the coal mined at Mardy was raised at

Tower Colliery Tower Colliery ( Welsh: Glofa'r Tŵr) was the oldest continuously working deep-coal mine in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world, until its closure in 2008. It was the last mine of its kind to remain in the South Wales Valleys. It was loca ...

Present day

The track was lifted in 1996, with the trackbed and most of the bridges left in situ. This formed the canal section of the

Taff Trail The Taff Trail ( cy, Taith Taf) is a popular walking and cycle path that runs for between Cardiff Bay and Brecon in Wales. It is so named because it follows the course of the River Taff. Along much of its length, it follows the National Cycle ...

cycle route. In 2004,

Rhondda Cynon Taff Rhondda Cynon Taf (; RCT; also spelt as Rhondda Cynon Taff) is a county borough in the south-east of Wales. It consists of five valleys: the Rhondda Fawr, Rhondda Fach, Cynon, Taff (Welsh: ''Taf'') and Ely valleys, plus a number of towns and vil ...

council came to an arrange with

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

to buy the trackbed from just north of Maerdy Junction to Margaret Street, Pontygwaith and convert it into a relief road for Ynyshir. Construction work started in May 2005, removing the remains of Ynyshir station, the bridges at Llanwonno road and Station street, and the replacement of the Rhondda Fach bridge at Ynyshir and the Ynyshir road bridge. Today the A4233 Porth and Lower Rhondda Fach Relief Road (Porth Bypass), has meant a significant decrease in traffic flows through the main street, Ynyshir Road.

Preservation

In April 2019, a local group of enthusiasts looking to improve the local economic outlook by bringing tourists to the area, proposed reinstating the 3 miles of track north of Tylorstown to Meardy. The proposal includes reinstatement of some stations and former industrial buildings.

References

{{Historical Welsh railway companies Taff Vale Railway Mining railways Railway lines in Wales Railway lines opened in 1875 Railway lines closed in 1964 Coal in Wales