Swanline is the name of the local rail service from to , on the

South Wales Main Line The South Wales Main Line ( cy, Prif Linell De Cymru), originally known as the London, Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway or simply as the Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway, is a branch of the Great Western Main Line in Great Britain. ...

History

The Swanline service was launched in June 1994, following the construction of five new stations at , , , and on the existing South Wales Main Line. Originally, an hourly service was provided through a partnership between

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 ...

and local government, with the local authorities securing EU development funding and retaining ownership of the trains needed to operate the service. During 1997, as part of railway privatisation, responsibility for Swanline services passed from

Regional Railways Regional Railways was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail created in 1982 that existed until 1997, two years after privatisation. The sector was originally called ''Provincial''. Regional Railways was the most subsidised (per pas ...

sector to South Wales & West Railway, a newly created franchised train operating company. In 1999, the company halved the service to two-hourly, citing poor passenger usage and offering to purchase the rolling stock for use elsewhere. From 2003 to 2018, the line was operated as part of the

Arriva Trains Wales Arriva Trains Wales (ATW; cy, Trenau Arriva Cymru) was a British train operating company owned by Arriva UK Trains that operated the Wales & Borders franchise. It ran urban and inter-urban passenger services to all railway stations in Wales, ...

franchise. In 2018, the franchise passed to

KeolisAmey Wales Keolis Amey Operations ( cy, Gweithrediadau KeolisAmey), Full legal name is bilingual including the Welsh name, as "Keolis Amey Operations / Gweithrediadau Keolis Amey Limited". trading as Transport for Wales Rail Services (TfW Rail Services) ...

and in 2021 to

Transport for Wales Rail Transport for Wales Rail Limited, branded as Transport for Wales and TfW Rail ( and ), is a Welsh publicly owned train operating company, a subsidiary of Transport for Wales (TfW), a Welsh Government-owned company. It commenced operations of t ...

. A bi-hourly service is provided on Mondays to Saturdays.

Potential changes

The Swanline service itself is regarded as unattractive to users at its current low frequency, with extremely restricted

journey to work Journey to work is data collected as part of a census that describes aspects of commuting behaviour. Travel survey, Travel behaviour surveys may also describe commuting habits, but this is rarely considered to be a journey to work. Data collected ...

options for Swansea commuters, but takes up valuable space on the busy section of line between Bridgend and Cardiff. Signalling renewal work in 2007 introduced a new turnback facility at Port Talbot station, intended primarily for turnbacks from the Cardiff direction, but actually capable of use by services in either direction. Owing to very light Swanline passenger loadings, it has been proposed that a more useful service could be offered by abandoning through-running to Cardiff and instead operating Swanline trains between Swansea and Port Talbot only. This would provide the Swansea Bay area with a more frequent, hourly service using the same resources (two trainsets).Network Rail Route Utilisation Strategies - Wales
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References

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History

Potential changes

References

See also