Ross and Monmouth Railway

Ross and Monmouth Railway
The bridge in the background is the iron bridge which was opened in 1874 to allow the line to reach Monmouth Troy
Overview
Locale	Monmouthshire-Herefordshire
Termini	Ross-on-Wye Monmouth
Stations	Seven
Operation
Opened	4 August 1873 (1873-08-04)
Closed	1959 (1959)
Operator(s)	Great Western Railway
Technical
Line length	13 mi (21 km)
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge

The Ross and Monmouth Railway was a standard gauge railway of 13 miles (21 km) which ran between Ross-on-Wye, in Herefordshire, England and Monmouth, Wales.

It was authorised in 1865 and opened in 1873, with a final extension at Monmouth delayed until 1874. It ran through picturesque terrain in the Upper Wye Valley, but construction costs considerably overran early estimates. The promoters hoped their line would form part of a trunk route for goods and mineral traffic between South Wales and the English Midlands, but this never developed. In fact although Monmouth was a junction for several local railways, it too never became the busy traffic centre that had been forecast.

The line was worked by the Great Western Railway from the outset, and the Ross and Monmouth Railway Company was simply a financial concern, receiving lease payments from the GWR, until absorption in 1922.

The decline in the use of local railways rendered the line heavily loss-making and in 1959 passenger services were withdrawn. Some residual goods services were retained, but in 1965 all commercial railway activity on the line ceased.

In 1844 the prospectus of the South Wales Railway was issued. It was to form a great undertaking linking London by means of its associated company, the Great Western Railway and Ireland, by extending to a ferry port in south-west Wales. The line was to cross the River Severn by a bridge south of Gloucester and then follow the bank of the river to Chepstow and then to Newport and beyond. Monmouth was important enough that it was stated that the line would pass within "easy distance" of the town, but that claim was comparative.

The residents of Monmouth urged a change of route, to run through Gloucester, Monmouth, Usk and Caerleon to reach Newport. In fact the proposed line of route east of Chepstow was rejected in Parliament, largely due to Admiralty objections to the bridge over the Severn, and the project was authorised west of Chepstow only in the 1845 session of Parliament; however there was to be a branch to Monmouth.

The promoters of the South Wales Railway returned to Parliament in the 1846 session of Parliament, with alternative proposals for crossing the Severn, but these were rejected once again, and a longer route through Gloucester, crossing the Severn there, was accepted. In fact the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway was the means of reaching Gloucester on the east side of the Severn. On the west side, the Gloucester and Dean Forest Railway had been authorised in 1845, to connect with the Monmouth and Hereford Railway near Grange Court. This would close the missing link to the South Wales Railway, and in fact the Great Western Railway took over the truncated Gloucester and Dean Forest Railway powers and built that section themselves.