Newport and Pontypool Railway

The Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company was a canal and railway company that operated a canal and a network of railways in the Western Valley and Eastern Valley of Newport, Monmouthshire. It started as the Monmouthshire Canal Navigation and opened canals from Newport to Pontypool and to Crumlin from 1796. Numerous tramroads connected nearby pits and ironworks with the canal.

After 1802 the Company built a tramway from Nine Mile Point, west of Risca, to Newport, and an associated company, the Sirhowy Tramroad, connected from Tredegar. Steam locomotives were used from 1829. By 1850 pressure was mounting to modernise the line, and in 1848 an Act of Parliament authorised conversion to a modern railway, construction of a new railway from Newport to Pontypool, and a change of name for the Company to the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company.

The high volume of mineral activity in the area kept the Company in good financial health for many years, but it failed to keep abreast of competing developments, and faced with unforeseen major loss of business it sold the rights to operate its network to the Great Western Railway in 1875. The GWR developed the network, until in the period after 1918 road competition increasingly abstracted passenger and non-mineral goods traffic. Passenger operation ceased in 1962.

The Eastern Valley Line closed completely south of Cwmbran Junction in 1963, but the Western Valley Line was sustained by the continued operation of British Steel's works at Ebbw Vale. A passenger service from Ebbw Vale to Cardiff was resumed on 6 February 2008.

For centuries the mineral wealth of Monmouthshire had been exploited, especially in the manufacture of iron; the necessary raw materials were all at hand: coal, ironstone, limestone, and timber. This availability encouraged technical innovation, and this in turn led to considerable progress in the industry. The iron production took place some distance from the coast, and transport away to a point of use was exceedingly difficult and expensive.

Industrialists in the area combined to finance the construction of a canal from Pontnewynydd, a little north-west of Pontypool, to Newport, and a second arm from near Crumlin, through Rogerstone to join the first arm of the canal at Crindau, close to Newport. Each arm of the canal was 11 miles in length. The canal was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1792, and the Act included permission to build connecting tramways or plateways (or alternatively "stone roads") to pits within seven miles of the canal, and to raise £120,000. The estimated cost was £106,000, and such was the enthusiasm for the scheme that the capital was all subscribed before the Act was passed.

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