The Ely Valley Railway (EVR) was a broad gauge railway company in South Wales, which opened a mineral line between Llantrisant station on the South Wales Railway main line and pits at Mwyndy and Penrhiwfer in 1860.
It was unsuccessful financially, and was leased to the Great Western Railway in 1861. The network suffered from being on the broad gauge when many pits and rival railways used the narrow (standard) gauge, but the GWR extended the network into Cwm Clydach and the line became heavily used. The Ely Valley Extension Railway and the Ely and Clydach Valleys Railway were nominally independent additions to the network, also controlled by the GWR.
A limited passenger service was started in 1901. The use of the network declined in the 1920s but the passenger service continued until 1958. The general mineral traffic collapsed in the 1960s but final closure only occurred when Cwm Colliery closed on 2 March 1987.
First railways The mineral resources of the upper end of the valley of the River Taff encouraged the development of iron smelting industries at Merthyr and Dowlais, and these were dominant by the first decades of the nineteenth century. Transport of the products to market was always a problem, and the Glamorganshire Canal of 1794 and primitive tramroads connecting to it were an early response.
The Taff Vale Railway was opened in 1840 and 1841 throughout from Merthyr to Cardiff Docks, and was immediately successful. It was a narrow (standard) gauge line; its course was through the present-day Abercynon and Pontypridd.
Mineral extraction at Dihewyd, near Llantwit Fardre, attracted interest, and a private railway was built from pits there to the Glamorganshire Canal at Maesbach. The pits and the railway were owned by Thomas Powell. The line had a rope-worked incline to descend into the Taff valley. It opened in April 1844 and was known as the Llantwit Fardre Railway.
Promoters associated with the Great Western Railway obtained authorisation for a trunk line from near Gloucester to Milford Haven, connecting South Wales to the GWR network and London, and the first section of their line between Chepstow and Swansea opened on 18 June 1850. Both lines were engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but the South Wales Railway was built on the broad gauge. It had a station called Llantrisant, although it was two miles from the town of that name. As a trunk railway, the South Wales Railway made few connections to collieries and iron mines, and the development of these industries in the area close to the main line was as yet limited.
In 1840 there was mineral activity in the Rhondda but at this stage it was limited to the area around Dinas, served by tramroads with which an 1841 branch of the Taff Vale Railway connected; the westward extension was in the future.
In 1845 a Rhondda and Ely Valley Railway was proposed; it would leave the South Wales Railway at Llantrisant and run to the head of the Rhondda Fawr, connecting also to proposed railways in the Ogmore Valley. On 16 September 1845 the promoters published their intention to obtain an act of Parliament authorising their line; the Taff Vale Railway had been aware of the move (from prior public meetings) and simultaneously published its own corresponding proposals to reach the Rhondda Fawr; the far greater resources resulted in the Ely Valley scheme being abandoned immediately.
Ely Valley Railway authorised In October 1856 it was announced that the Ely and Rhondda Valleys Railway was being promoted, although at first it would only build eight miles of line, from Llantrisant to Dinas (Penygraig). In November the statutory parliamentary notice was published; the company name had been altered to the Ely Valley Railway; it was to be a broad gauge line miles long from Llantrisant to Penrhiwfer, with two branches. It was primarily a mineral railway, and passengers would not be carried.
The bill went to Parliament and encountered only limited opposition, and the (20 & 21 Vict. c. xli) received royal assent on 13 July 1857, with capital of £70,000. At the first formal board meeting it was decided to seek powers to build a branch to the productive Mwyndy iron ore mine, and possibly on to Brofiscin Quarry. This was successfully achieved in the (21 & 22 Vict. c. xxx), with an additional £13,000 of capital authorised.
Construction work was soon under way, and the directors decided that it was a high priority to open to the Mwyndy mine so as to bring some money in. Temporary track and horse traction was used to manage this, and an informal opening took place before 22 February 1859.
Ely Tidal Harbour The Ely Tidal Harbour and Railway Company had been incorporated by the Ely Tidal Harbour and Railway (Glamorgan) Act 1856 (19 & 20 Vict. c. cxxii) of 21 July 1856 to build a harbour at the mouth of the River Ely, to the west of Cardiff, and to build a narrow (standard) gauge railway to meet the Taff Vale Railway at the place that is now Radyr. The primary purpose of this was to relieve the congestion at the Bute docks on the east side of Cardiff, and on the approach lines of the TVR.
The following year, on 27 July 1857 the company changed its name to the Penarth Harbour, Dock and Railway, and the scope was increased to add the dock. The harbour was relatively quickly made ready, opening for business on 18 July 1859, but the dock took considerably longer, in fact until 1865.
As well as carrying the traffic of the TVR to its new harbour, the Penarth company was interested in the traffic that might come from the Ely company, located as it was on the west side of Cardiff. A meeting took place between the two companies on 15 December 1858, at which the Penarth company suggested a narrow (standard) gauge link between them.
When the Ely Valley Railway (EVR) was planned, the only other railway in the vicinity was the broad gauge South Wales Railway, and it seemed obvious at the time to make the EVR line on the same gauge. On reflection, however, this posed some serious disadvantages; iron ore bound for the Merthyr and Dowlais smelters had to travel via Neath and the Vale of Neath Railway, and be transhipped near the end of the journey. Moreover there were limited facilities at Cardiff for supplying ships from broad gauge wagons.
The Penarth company now recommended a narrow gauge connection, and the idea seemed attractive to the Ely Valley Railway (EVR) directors. In addition to the EVR converting its system to the narrow gauge, this could best be achieved by the South Wales Railway laying a third rail, to make mixed gauge track between Llantrisant and the junction for Penarth; in fact the scheme escalated to include the route as far as the Bute East Dock, mutual running powers being offered. The South Wales Railway was not hostile to these arrangements, but wished to get Great Western Railway (GWR) acquiescence. In fact the GWR were entirely opposed to the plan, seeing no benefit to compensate for the expense of carrying it out, and the negotiations were at an end; the EVR had wrapped up a number of secondary, but important, issues in the talks, and now these were lost as well.
As a fallback, the EVR and the Penarth company discussed the building of a connecting line between the two systems; all seemed to be going well, with discussion of assistance with funding. But in March 1860 the magnitude of the costs involved in building the new line and converting the existing EVR system was addressed, and it was quickly seen that the whole thing was not affordable.
Opening the line The Ely Valley Railway (EVR) was not yet fully open, and thoughts now turned urgently to the working arrangements for their line. On 15 June 1860, an agreement was concluded with the joint operating committee of the South Wales Railway and the Great Western Railway (GWR) as to the working of the Mwyndy branch by the GWR, and a corresponding agreement for the Ely Valley main line was finalised soon after. The effective date of these agreements was to be 1 August 1860.
On 2 August 1860 a ceremonial opening of the lines took place. As well as the Mwyndy branch, the main line ran from Llantrisant station to Penrhiwfer, a little beyond Tonyrefail, where there were important collieries. There were two short branches: one was to Castellau, diverging north-eastward not far north of Llantrisant; the other was to Gellirhaidd, running to the west from a point not far south of Penrhiwfer.
The Mwyndy branch was extended to Brofiscin, opening on 8 January 1862.
Lease to the Great Western Railway For some time the Great Western Railway, quite independently of the South Wales Railway, had taken an interest in the developing collieries near Gyfeillon, in the Rhondda a little west of Pontypridd, where excellent quality steam coal was being extracted. In 1854 the GWR had leased a colliery belonging to John Calvert, using it to supply locomotive coal. It became known as the Great Western Mine.
The GWR now approached the EVR with a proposal to acquire the network; the plan was to extend it to Gyfeillon, giving the GWR broad gauge access from the colliery to its system. The EVR asked for £100,000 in cash to purchase, and difficult negotiations progressed, ending with a 999 year lease, taking £35,000 worth of EVR shares and guaranteeing 5% per annum on £80,000. This was agreed and was effective from 1 January 1861, being ratified by the Great Western, Hereford, Ross and Gloucester, and Ely Valley Railways Act 1862 (25 & 26 Vict. c. cxcvi) of 29 July 1862. (in fact the Gyfeillon extension was never built.)
Narrow gauge lines at Llantrisant
At the time these discussions were proceeding, the Taff Vale Railway were encouraging the promotion of what became the Llantrisant and Taff Vale Junction Railway (L&TVJR), a line to Llantrisant from near Treforest, connecting up numerous small mines on between, and forming an intrusion into territory that the broad gauge companies considered their own.
The was authorised on 7 June 1861, and opened part of its line at the northern end on 17 September 1863. However the southern end of the L&TVJR was a junction with the broad gauge Ely Valley Railway at Maesaraul.
The Cowbridge Railway was designed to give the town a connection to the merging railway network, but was short of funding. When the Taff Vale Railway assisted it by taking part of the share issue, it was inevitable that the line would be built on the narrow gauge.
The Cowbridge Railway intended to cross the South Wales Railway main line and connect with the at Maesaraul, but this proved beyond its means, and it settled for running into a platform alongside the South Wales Railway station at Llantrisant. That left a gap between the two narrow gauge systems; as part of the negotiation in parliamentary committees, the GWR undertook to mix the gauge on the Ely Valley Railway between Maesaraul and Llantrisant, enabling through running; the necessary running powers were granted to the Cowbridge Railway.
In fact a second, narrow gauge, line was built from Llantrisant to Mwyndy Junction, the lines being mixed onward from there.
The Taff Vale Railway worked the trains on both the Cowbridge and systems, so that passenger trains ran through from Pontypridd to Cowbridge, reversing at Llantrisant. This started on 18 September 1865, when the Ely Valley Railway had finally got approval from the Board of Trade for passenger operation over the mixed gauge section.
The Cowbridge Railway had opened for goods traffic on 30 January 1865.
The Ely Valley Railway had separately undertaken to lay mixed gauge track to enable access for the to Mwyndy, but, no doubt encouraged by the Great Western Railway, was very slow to do so, and a legalistic point over the extent of the branch was used to delay matters. It was not until 5 December 1864 that the installation of mixed gauge was done.
North from Penrhiwfer