Rhymney Railway

The Rhymney Railway was virtually a single stretch of main line, some fifty miles in length, by which the Rhymney Valley was connected to the docks at Cardiff in the county of Glamorgan, South Wales.

The aim of the railway was to gain access to the large iron works and collieries at the extreme north of the Valley. Short extensions, connecting with other railways, gave the Rhymney routes to take its (largely mineral) traffic to the Midlands and the North of England, or opened up connections to collieries and iron works. Some of those routes were worked jointly with other companies, particularly the London and North Western Railway (LNWR).

The original incorporation was in 1854, and the railway was opened in various sections as follows:

The Rhymney owned 120 locomotives in 1911. By then the total mileage of the Rhymney was over 61 miles; a further 16 miles of 'foreign' track was also worked over. Over two million tons of freight had been carried.

The first workshops for the railway were in Cardiff, opening in 1857 but, as their work increased, there was insufficient room for expansion, and Caerphilly railway works was opened in 1899.

Although the Rhymney was nominally independent until absorption in the Great Western Railway on 1 January 1922, the same managing director, in 1917, took over control of the line and the Taff Vale Railway and the Cardiff Railway, making them to all and intents and purposes one undertaking.

The stations of the line from Cardiff to Rhymney were as follows:-

From south to north these were:

All of those branches have since been closed.

Cornelius Lundie, from the outset of the line and for more than 40 years, was General Manager, Traffic Manager and Superintendent of the line. Upon his retirement in 1904, the Rhymney did a spring cleaning, which notably included the scrapping of his favourite engine, which he had been preserving for a number of years.

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