The Manchester and Milford Railway (M&MR) was a Welsh railway company, intended to connect Manchester and the industrial areas of North West England with a deep-water port on Milford Haven, giving an alternative to the Port of Liverpool.
Despite the title, it was planned to connect other railways at Llanidloes and Pencader, near Carmarthen, and achieve the object in its name by connections with other lines, most of which were only planned. The had continuous difficulty in raising capital and also in operating profitably but, thanks to a wealthy supporter, it opened from Pencader to Lampeter in 1866. Realising that its originally intended route to Llanidloes would be unprofitable, it diverted the course at the north end to Aberystwyth, which it reached in 1867.
Sunk by financial difficulties, it was eventually absorbed into the Great Western Railway in 1911. Passenger operation ceased in 1964 and milk trains ran to a creamery until final closure in 1973.
Early schemes In the early years of the nineteenth century, Manchester and the surrounding districts had become dominant in many manufacturing industries, particularly textiles. As the volume of the trade increased, the import of raw materials, and the export and coastal transport of finished goods assumed an ever more important consideration in the industrial process. The Port of Liverpool was conveniently located and became the chief west coast port, and as trade with the Americas developed, Liverpool grew in importance.
The cost and time taken for transport to and from Liverpool was nevertheless significant, and the existing waterborne transport routes were expensive and slow. In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened, immediately becoming a financial and commercial success. Although it was prime, Liverpool was not the only west coast port—it was rivalled by Bristol—but the thoughts of some business people turned to alternatives, and in 1845 the Manchester and Milford Haven Railway was proposed. This would create a new deep water port on Milford Haven Waterway in south-west Wales, and build a railway line connecting to Manchester. Milford Haven had the advantage of being located further southwest than Liverpool, with a corresponding shortening of the sea passage. The route was to start at Crewe, already connected to Manchester by the Manchester and Birmingham Railway, and run by way of Oswestry, Devil's Bridge, Lampeter and Haverfordwest. The line was to be broad gauge although the difficulties of the break of gauge at the northern end were not clearly elucidated.
By planning to build a line to Milford Haven, the company would have been in conflict with the South Wales Railway, which had issued a prospectus the previous year (1844) for a line connecting the Great Western Railway and Fishguard, also with a view to the transatlantic trade although mainly focused on communication with Ireland. The South Wales Railway was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Brunel began to have doubts about Fishguard, and he too adopted Neyland, a port on Milford Haven. The South Wales Railway was built, but the Manchester and Milford Haven Railway came to nothing.
The scheme was to cost £2.6 million. The scheme "failed to materialize and lay dormant for several years, during which time other companies had covered the intended route, except for the through central Wales from Llanidloes to Pencader."
This was the time of the "railway mania", when money was cheap and any number of railway schemes were put forward. The blank area on the map without mainline railways and the west-facing expanse of coast in Cardigan Bay proved alluring to railway promoters. Contemporary with the scheme was a North and South Wales and Worcester Railway, which proposed construction from Carmarthen to Aberystwyth and Machynlleth; it too failed to progress, and these proposals were followed by a series of schemes for linking the industrial northwest England with southwest Wales. The barrier of the Cambrian Mountains proved an engineering challenge which in many cases was underestimated at the planning stage.
The Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway was promoted to connect Cardigan to the South Wales Railway and thence the railway network. It was authorised by the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway Act 1854 (17 & 18 Vict. c. ccxviii) in 1854, although only for a line between Carmarthen and Newcastle Emlyn. Extension to Cardigan, and construction of a deep water port there, was to follow later. The Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway was presumed to be a useful ally in what might become a chain of railways, shortening the extent of new construction necessary between Manchester and the port.
The Manchester and Milford Railway authorised By 1859 the idea of what was now to be the Manchester and Milford Railway was taking shape; it was to be built from Llanidloes "accessible from the north via either the Great Western Railway or the London and North Western Railway" to Pencader, where it would join the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway.
The prospectus was enthusiastic:Statement of Facts in documents submitted to Parliament by the promoters in 1860, quoted in
Llanidloes was on the Llanidloes and Newtown Railway, opened in 1859, and the access to the and was by no means as clear cut as suggested. The running powers beyond the extremities of the line were not secured. Construction and land acquisition costs were understated and traffic earnings to be expected were overstated, but on 23 July 1860 the Manchester and Milford Railway was authorised by Parliament in the (23 & 24 Vict. c. clxxv), with share capital of £555,000. An apparently firm arrangement had already been made with Frederick Beeston to construct the line for £447,000.
Construction David Davies and Thomas Savin were prominent railway contractors in Wales at the time, and offered to take shares in the concern as payment for construction of the northern part of the line. The company appear to have invited Savin to meet Beeston to discuss the sharing of the contract work, but unsurprisingly Beeston declined. Raising subscriptions to fund the construction of the line proved exceedingly difficult, and throughout its life the line was under-capitalised.
The main physical obstacle was the great mass of the Cambrian Mountains just south of Plynlimon, separating West Wales from the Severn Valley; it was to be tunnelled as part of the section between Llanidloes and Pencader. The Mid-Wales Railway (MWR) had been authorised in 1859 to build from Llanidloes to Newbridge-on-Wye, and the Manchester and Milford now realised that the other company's authorised alignment was largely over the same terrain as its own for miles or so from Llanidloes south to a place called Penpontbren. The 's reaction was to persuade Frederick Beeston to build that section at once, so as to preempt the intentions of the , which had not done much in its first year. Beeston agreed to do this for £30,000 and £10,000 in paid-up shares; this was accepted by the , but the company did not have that amount of cash available, and persuaded Beeston to take the payment in instalments, and in paid-up shares at a 33% discount. All this was contingent on the acquiring the land, but the MWR was already negotiating with landowners, and the idea of stealing a march on the MWR was impossible. An uninspiring series of disingenuous proposals followed, eventually leading to legal action. At length the solution was arrived at: the Llanidloes and Newtown Railway (L&NR) had been authorised in 1859 to build east from Llanidloes, and was in the process of construction; indeed the always planned to make an end-on junction with it. If the were to build the section of disputed route (as far south as Penpontbren), and make that part of its line available solely to the and the MWR, then the problem would be solved. A parliamentary bill for the Llanidloes and Newtown Railway was prepared for the 1862 session, and it was authorised in that year. The two companies were to pay it 5% per annum on capital, and there was to be a joint station at Llanidloes; the Manchester and Milford was to pay a third of the running costs of the station and interest on its capital cost.
The pressed ahead with construction, and the section to Penpontbren and the joint Llanidloes station were completed in February 1864, and the transferred its own trains to the joint station, demoting its own terminus to a goods station. The Mid-Wales Railway too was building its line, and opened this part of it in September 1864, from which date it started using the "shared" route section and the joint station. Meanwhile the set about building west from Penpontbren; it managed as far as the village of Llangurig, which was completed in 1864, construction then being halted. The section was laid with double track; only one goods is train is known to have reached Llangurig station. West from the village there was to be a tunnel under Banc Merin (on which construction actually began) from Cae Gaer Roman fort to the Afon Merin valley; then another, and before reaching the coastal plain of West Wales it would have crossed a viaduct high over the Afon Ystwyth at Pont-rhyd-y-groes.
Hopes of one day completing the line remained, and meetings were held in 1872 proposing that, but it was a lost cause.
Relations with Frederick Beeston, the 's contractor, were difficult, and it is obvious that the , having little money in the capital account, had been unable to secure the land necessary for Beeston to make much progress. Notwithstanding the contract with Beeston (part of which was transferred by agreement to his son, Frederick Beeston Jnr, in 1861), the company now negotiated with Savin over taking on much of the construction. Savin was prepared to finance the work himself, taking shares in payment as well as £100,000 in cash at some later date. Beeston immediately sent a letter threatening a lawsuit if his preexisting contract were interfered with, and for the time being matters stalled.
The route as authorised was to run more or less direct from Lampeter through Tregaron and Devil's Bridge to Pant-mawr and Llanidloes. The intermediate terrain was thinly populated and had limited industrial activity, the objective being to connect Manchester and the port in southwest Wales as directly as possible. The now began to reconsider the wisdom of this, and decided to build to Aberystwyth from Devil's Bridge. Ignoring its great difficulty in raising capital, the obtained an act of Parliament, the (24 & 25 Vict. c. cl) in July 1861 for this extension, with additional capital authorised of £110,000, and in November 1861 the company proposed a further branch, known as the Rhayader branch, and in the Parliamentary session of 1863 a harbour branch and other connections at Aberystwyth were being proposed. Now the route was to run along the east side of the River Teifi valley from Pencader via Llanybydder, Lampeter, Tregaron, Pontrhydfendigaid, Ysbyty Ystwyth and Pontrhydygroes to Devil's Bridge. There, a junction station would be constructed, with the main line proceeding to Llanidloes, and a branch line to .
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