The Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway (BP&GVR) was a mineral railway company that constructed a railway line in Carmarthenshire, Wales, by conversion of a canal, to connect collieries and limestone pits to the sea at Kidwelly. It extended its network to include Burry Port, Trimsaran and a brickworks at Pwll, later extending to Sandy near Llanelli. For a time the company worked the separate Gwendreath Valleys Railway (GVR). The was notable because of the very low height of some overbridges, a legacy of the canal conversion.
It was completely dependent on the economy of the mineral industries it served and due to depression in them, it was for many years in administration. In the final years of the nineteenth century those industries developed considerably and the fortunes of the improved as well, paying 10% dividends for several years, before absorption by the Great Western Railway in 1922.
For some time the line carried miners to their place of work, and their families to market, and from 1913 the company carried the general public in passenger trains.
After 1945 mineral extraction in the area declined steeply; passenger operation ceased in 1953, and in the 1960s most of the network closed progressively as pits closed. The final short section at Kidwelly closed in 1998.
The canal before the railway
Coal had been extracted in the area above Llanelly for centuries, but transport of the heavy mineral to market was difficult. Coastal shipping was essential to the process, although there were limited harbour facilities before the nineteenth century. Getting the coal from the hills to the coast was the problem.
About 1768 Thomas Kymer had built a canal to Pwll-y-Llygod, and a waggonway was constructed from the head of the canal there to pits at Carway a mile or so distant. The rails were of timber and the wagon wheels were flanged; it was probably opened in 1769.M J T Lewis, Early Wooden Railways, Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited, London, 1974, E F Carter, An Historical Geography of the Railways of the British Isles, Cassell, London, 1959John Bourne, The Burry Port & Gwendraeth Valley Railway, in the Railway Magazine, November 1953
In 1796 John Curr developed a plateway system, in which flat plates with an upstand for guidance could carry wagons with plain wheels.Raymond E Bowen, Burry Port and Gwendreath Valley Railway and its Antecedent Canals: volume 1: the Canals, Oakwood Press, Usk, 2001,
The Stradey Estate near Llanelly had long been active in mining, and had constructed plateways; horse traction was used. The most important waggonway on the estate brought coal from a pit at Cille to Llanelly where small ships were beached for loading, as there was no proper wharfage at the time.
In 1804 the Carmarthenshire Railway was opened; it was an important plateway connecting coal pits near Cross Hands and ironworks to the harbour (which it developed itself) at Llanelly.
In 1812 the Kidwelly and Llanelly Canal and Tramroad Company was authorised by the Kidwelly and Llanelly Canal and Tramroad Company Act 1812 (52 Geo. 3. c. clxxiii). As well as the main line of the canal, there were to be waggonways as feeders to the canal. Two waggonway branches, probably of gauge in connection with the Burry Port harbour were completed in 1832. The waggonways were horse-operated; one ran north to Cwmcapel and the other east to Sandy, near Llanelly. At this point it connected with the Cille Colliery waggonway on the Stradey Estate. Completion of the project was much delayed, taking until 1837, by which time railway technology was clearly overtaking canals as the dominant transport medium.R W Miller, The Burry Port & Gwendreath Valley Railway and its Antecedent Canals: Volume Two: The Railway and Dock, Oakwood Press, Usk, 2009, D S M Barrie, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: volume 12: South Wales, David St John Thomas, Nairn, 1994,
A powerful storm breached the main line near Sandy in 1846, and the low traffic volume was not considered to justify the expenditure of reinstatement. From then onwards the line from Burry Port ended at a colliery and brickworks at Pwll. The company also had two short branch canals which were extended by tramroads to the collieries at Trimsaran and Carway. The tramroads were owned by the respective collieries.
The main line of the canal up the Gwendraeth Fawr Valley reached Cwm Mawr at a considerable altitude, and the upper level had three inclined planes, with gradients of 1 in 13, 1 in and 1 in . By 1865 the top portion of the canal above this last incline had become disused, and a tramroad was laid along the towpath.
Broad gauge railways In 1844 the Great Western Railway (GWR) sponsored the South Wales Railway to build a broad gauge railway connecting Gloucester, and the network, with Fishguard, originally with the intention of forming a rail and ferry connection to Dublin. The line from Landore (Swansea) to Carmarthen opened on 11 October 1852. The worked the line, and although the relationship was not always smooth, amalgamation followed on 1 August 1863. When the South Wales Railway line was opened it crossed the tramroads to Pwll and Cwm Capel on the level.
There had been proposals for railways from Kidwelly into the Gwendraeth Fach Valley but the powers lapsed without any construction taking place, but in 1864 a bill was presented by the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway (C&CR) to build two broad or mixed gauge branches from the at Kidwelly. The Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway was a broad gauge line friendly to the Great Western Railway. One of the proposed branches, known as the "Lime Line",Lime was an important mineral for the improvement of agricultural land at the time; limestone was also used in iron production. was to be routed via Mynydd-y-Garreg to Velindre in the Gwendraeth Fach Valley; the other, known as the "Coal Line" was to cross the canal and the river Gwendraeth Fawr in an eastward direction and then curve north-eastwards via the Carway Colliery up the Gwendraeth Fawr Valley to Coalbrook. The Coal Line was thrown out in Parliament but the Lime Line was authorised by the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway (Kidwelly Branch) Act 1864 (27 & 28 Vict. c. xiii) of 28 April. A second attempt at the Coal Line was made in the following session of Parliament, and this time it was authorised by the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway (Kidwelly Extension) Act 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. c. clxx) of 29 June. However the found itself unable to raise the capital authorised, and it never reached Cardigan, nor built the branch.
Gwendreath Valleys Railway
As part of the financial solution, the two Kidwelly branches were transferred to a new company: the (GVR), authorised by the (29 & 30 Vict. c. ccxcvii) of 30 July. This new concern duly completed a short length of the Lime Line to Mynydd-y-Garreg and this opened to broad gauge traffic in 1868. A short section of the earthworks for the Coal Line was completed, but then this line was abandoned.
Converting the canal
At this time there were also movements to revive the old Carmarthenshire Railway; this had been built as a plateway in 1804, bringing down minerals from Cross Hands to a harbour at Llanelly. The Llanelly Railway and Dock Company had opened a line from Llanelly to serve pits in the Cwmamman area, also reaching Cross Hands and extending to Llandeilo. In 1861 the obtained an act of Parliament, the Llanelly Railway (New Lines) Act 1861 (24 & 25 Vict. c. ccxvii), giving authority to extend from Llandeilo to Carmarthen, and the line opened to goods trains in 1864.
Coupled with the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway, these schemes represented a definite competitive threat to the Kidwelly and Llanelly Canal and Tramroad Company, and it submitted a bill to Parliament to convert the obsolescent canal system to a railway. The bill received the royal assent on 5 July 1865 as the (28 & 29 Vict. c. ccxviii); the canal company was to change its name to the Kidwelly and Burry Port Railway Company (K&BPR). It was to absorb Kymer's canal and build miles of new railways: from Burry Port to a junction with the Mountain Branch of the Llanelly Railway and Dock Company at Llanarthney, and a second main line to Cross Hands Colliery. The authorised capital for the project was £120,000, of which £72,400 represented the purchase price of the canal system; as out-dated technology threatened by viable competitors this was plainly a huge over-valuation.Christopher Awdry, Encyclopaedia of British Railway Companies, Patrick Stephens Limited, Wellingborough, 1990, H Morgan, South Wales Branch Lines, Ian Allan Ltd, Shepperton, 1984, Bertram Baxter, Stone Blocks and Iron Rails (Tramroads), David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1966
The new railway system was closely connected with the Burry Port Harbour Company, with which it shared many directors, and the decision was taken to combine the two companies. This was done by a further act, the (29 & 30 Vict. c. v), of 30 April 1866 vesting the Burry Port Harbour in the and changing the name of the combined undertaking to the Burry Port and Gwendreath Valley Railway. The harbour company's share and loan capital of £85,000 was added to that of the . The company's parliamentary legal advisors included the misspelling Gwendreath in the deposited documents and it was under that name that the company was authorised. The company seems not to have noticed the error for two years, but the opportunity to correct the matter was not taken in the (31 & 32 Vict. c. i), nor in any later acts.The spelling Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway is generally used in this article.
A contractor, Frederick Furness, was appointed on 9 July 1868 and he was prepared to take part of the payment for his services in preference shares. The canal was closed and the line was laid as far as possible on the towpath. Under certain bridges the line was laid at a lower level than the towpath, necessitating short downgrades to pass under; nonetheless the headroom at overbridges was very restricted, leading to problems later. At the locks quite steep gradients were employed to accommodate the change of level. The track was laid with flat bottom rails weighing 50 to 60 lbs per yard spiked directly to the sleepers.
With the canal closed it was obviously essential to make the conversion and open the railway quickly, and the line was officially opened as far as Pontyberem on 23 June 1869.Date from Miller; Barrie says "in July 1869", as do Carter and Bourne. It had cost £33,841 to build, excluding the cost of acquisition of the canal. The short Carway branch opened about the end of 1870 and that to the Star Colliery at Trimsaran followed in June 1872. The opening of the main line and these branches encouraged the revitalisation of several pits in the area, by reducing the cost of transport of the mineral to market; however this effect was accompanied by some closures as well. The main line was completed to the foot of the Hirwaen Isaf incline, a mile short of Cwm Mawr in 1870.From Miller. Bourne, Morgan and Cobb suggest that Cwm Mawr was reached in 1869. In addition, the designation "Cwm Mawr" is ambiguous, referring to the general area and not necessarily the final terminus of the railway.
Mason and Elkington Ltd owned a copper works at Burry Port, and acquired the Pool (or Pwll) colliery in 1865. They started converting an old canal tramroad from Burry Port to Pool into a railway; the work took at least until 1867. The same company converted the old Cwm Capel waggonway to a railway in 1876. It was not directly connected to the , but was accessed through the docks and the line.
Early operation
The was simply a mineral railway (general merchandise was carried too) and operated without signalling.