Maerdy Branch

The Maerdy Branch was a railway branch line in South Wales. Financed and operated by the Taff Vale Railway, on amalgamation became part of the Great Western Railway in 1923. Designed and mainly operated as a coal mining freight railway, its creation and demise was wholly defined by the South Wales Coalfield.

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 Pontypridd. In 1840, the TVR bought the private Ferndale to Maerdy colliery track, and then extended to it from Porth from 1849.

Passenger operations began in 1875, serving interim stations from Porth at Ynyshir (opened 1876), Pontygwaith, Tylorstown, and Ferndale. Though the line had opened up to Maerdy the same year (with the sinking & commissioning of Mardy Colliery), it wasn't 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.

The last passenger train ran on 13 June 1964 as a result of the Beeching cuts, 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.

...
Wikipedia