South Wales Railway

The South Wales Railway (Welsh: Rheilffordd De Cymru) was an early main line railway intended to connect the Great Western Railway near Gloucester with south and south-west Wales. It was constructed on the broad gauge, and was opened in stages from 1850.

An original aspiration was to reach Fishguard to engender an Irish ferry transit and transatlantic trade, but the latter did not materialise for many years, and never became an important sector of business; Neyland, on Milford Haven, was made the western terminus of the line until 1906.

The South Wales Railway was amalgamated with the Great Western Railway in 1863, and the track was converted to narrow (standard) gauge in 1873. On the "grouping" of the railways in 1922–1923, most of the independent Welsh railways were constituents of the new enlarged Great Western Railway, enabling rationalisation and benefits of scale.

Nearly all of the original main line of the South Wales Railway remains in use at present (2016).

The prospectus of the South Wales Railway was issued in the summer of 1844. It proposed a railway with capital of £2,500,000 to run from Standish, on the Cheltenham branch of the Great Western Railway where the Bristol and Gloucester line joins it. The line as to bridge the River Severn at Hock Cliffe between Fretherne and Awre and follow the coast by Chepstow and Newport, Cardiff, Bridgend, Aberavon, Neath, Swansea, Carmarthen and Fishguard. There was to be a branch from near Whitland to Pembroke.

The prospectus was published widely as a newspaper advertisement:

...
Wikipedia