The Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway was a railway company formed to connect the places in its name. When it sought parliamentary authorisation, it was denied the southern section, and obliged to use the Monmouthshire Railway between Pontypool and Newport.
It opened on 6 December 1853, and was part of an important chain of lines between south-east Wales and Birkenhead; mineral traffic in both directions was dominant. The London and North Western Railway hoped to exploit the line to form a network in South Wales, but that aspiration was not fully realised, and in 1860 the NA&HR merged with other railways to form the West Midland Railway, which soon amalgamated with the Great Western Railway in 1863.
In order better to serve the ironworks in the South Wales Valleys, the NA&HR built the Taff Vale Extension Line, running west from Pontypool and cutting across several of the valleys, making connections with other companies' lines, eventually at twelve locations. The line was opened in stages from 1857, and included the Crumlin Viaduct crossing the valley of the Ebbw River.
After 1945 local passenger and goods business collapsed, and somewhat later the mineral industries declined too. By 1979 only the Pontypool to Hereford main line, and some short stubs of the Taff Vale Extension Line remained in use, but the main line flourished, and continues in use as an important secondary main line.
Authorisation In the first half of the 1840s a scheme was conceived to link the industrial centres of the West Midlands directly with the metal industries of South Wales. The idea became the Welsh Midland Railway, and it would have run from Worcester via Hereford and Brecon to join the Taff Vale Railway. However the financial chaos following the Railway Mania resulted in that scheme being dropped.E T MacDermot, History of the Great Western Railway: volume I: 1833–1863, part 2, published by the Great Western Railway, London, 1927
It was revived as a more modest scheme, and the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway was incorporated on 3 August 1846. It had been proposed to build the line to Newport, but the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company had been authorised in 1845 to build its Newport and Pontypool line, and Parliament declined to authorise a duplicate route. Instead the (9 & 10 Vict. c. ccciii) authorised it to build from a junction with the intended Newport and Pontypool Railway in the parish of Llanvrechva to Hereford. It was to take over and use the alignments of three earlier tramroads: the Llanvihangel, Grosmont and Hereford Railways. Their acquisition was strategic, in order to obtain the right of way, and very little use was made of the tramroads themselves by the NA&HR.D S M Barrie, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: volume 12: South Wales, David St John Thomas Nairn, second edition 1994,
A further act of Parliament, the (10 & 11 Vict. c. lxxxvi), was passed the following year authorising minor changes to the route, and a junction with the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway.Gordon Wood, Railways of Hereford, Amadeus Press, Cleckheaton, 2003, The timing of the 1846 authorisation was unfortunate, as the continuing financial crisis at the time made it impossible to raise money for railway schemes, and for some years no attempt was made to start building the line. Nevertheless, in 1847 the company also applied, and secured, authorisation in the (10 & 11 Vict. c. clxxvii) for the Taff Vale Extension line, from Llanvrechva to a junction with the Taff Vale Railway near Quakers Yard, requiring a further £400,000 of capital.
Construction The financial crisis resulted in complete inaction on the ground, and the Company sought postponement of the acquisition of the three tramways. In 1851 the London and North Western Railway feared that the GWR and its broad gauge allies were attempting to monopolise South Wales, and the LNWR itself took an interest in reaching South Wales; the NA&HR would be a key link in the chain for that purpose. In partnership with the Midland Railway the LNWR suggested generous terms to the NA&HR in completing and working their line. Negotiations dragged on with opposition from some LNWR directors, but the NA&HR were offered 4% on their capital outlay, but only when the Worcester and Hereford Railway was opened. This agreement was finalised on 19 February 1852 and included LNWR directors taking 8% of the NA&HR share issue.
In May 1851 the engineer Charles Liddell had been appointed to supervise the construction, and by March 1852 construction work was in progress on the ground. A working agreement with the LNWR was agreed, to come into effect when the Worcester and Hereford Railway was opened: at this stage its authorising Bill was in Parliament.
The mineral traffic potential was hugely dominant: two sets of carriages would be enough for the passenger service, but the LNWR estimated that 1,000 wagons would be required. The Cunard shipping line alone had indicated a requirement for steam coal of 100,000 tons annually at Birkenhead and 300,000 at Liverpool . (In fact about a third of that number were in use in 1854.)
In 1853 the NA&HR sought parliamentary approval for leasing its line to the LNWR, and for extensions of its network to Swansea and Brecon; at the time Parliament was against large scale amalgamations, and these measures were rejected.
Opening Construction of the planned Newport and Pontypool Railway had not made much progress, but it had resumed under a fresh authorising act of Parliament, the Newport and Pontypool Railway Amendment Act 1848 (11 & 12 Vict. c. cxx); it was built by the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company, and it was opened on 30 June 1852. The Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway was opened to goods trains on 30 July 1852, and the formal opening to passengers took place on 6 December 1853, but a slip at Llanvihangel caused the Board of Trade inspecting officer, Captain Wynne, to refuse opening for passenger traffic, and public service was not started until 2 January 1854. The Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway had opened on 6 December 1853.
The permanent way consisted of a double track of Barlow rails throughout the main line, Coedygric Junction to the Barton station at Hereford. It was standard gauge.
Services reached Newport Mill Street station over the Monmouthshire Railway, which had opened in 1852; its line was single at first, but it was doubled in April 1854. The two networks joined at Coedygric Junction, near Pontypool. The NA&HR had no statutory running powers over the NA&HR; the arrangement was by mutual agreement. The Hereford station was later known as Hereford (Barton). By a northward extension a mile in lengthThe mile extension was actually the property of the Worcester and Hereford Railway, but it was constructed by the NA&HR as agents for them. a junction was made at Barrs Court Junction with the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway; this single line was opened to passenger trains on 16 January 1854,Stanley C Jenkins and Martin Loader, The Great Western Railway: volume four: the North and West Route, Amberley Publishing Limited, Stroud, 2015, Rex Christiansen, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: volume 13: Thames and Severn, David & Charles (Publishers) Limited, Newton Abbot, 1981, completing a continuous railway from the River Dee to the Bristol Channel.Gwyn Briwnant Jones and Denis Dunstone, The Origins of the LMS in South Wales, Gomer Press, Ceredigion, 1999,
The NA&HR was worked from the outset by the London and North Western Railway.
Taff Vale Extension Railway
The attraction of South Wales as a considerable centre of the metal-working industries was not diminished, and the directors considered it important to make a connection to the district. They obtained powers in the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway (Extension to Taff Vale Railway) Act 1847 (10 & 11 Vict. c. clxxvii) for the Taff Vale Extension Railway, which was to run from Coedygric North Junction at Pontypool westwards to make a junction with the Taff Vale Railway at Quakers Yard.
The South Wales valleys may be considered to run broadly southwards and many of them were already served by a railway line running to the ports. The Taff Vale Extension line was to run from east to west; this would enable it to connect into many of the valley lines, but as it crossed the grain of the valleys, it would be challenging to construct. In 1853 work was started on the Crumlin Viaduct, stated to be the largest viaduct in the world,Barrie says, page 61, that it was the third highest structure of its kind in the world, at 208 feet. crossing the Ebbw Valley at a height of 200 feet, and 1650 feet in length. The first section of the Taff Vale Extension line from Pontypool Road to Crumlin Junction was opened on 20 August 1855.MacDermot says (volume I part II page 534) "though the sanction of the Board of Trade was not obtained till two months later." It was a single line of Barlow rails at first, but was doubled soon afterwards. The branch down to Llanhilleth was opened to an NA&HR goods depot there on 3 September 1855 and a connection joining the Monmouthshire Railway's Western Valley line at Llanhilleth opened on 20 October 1855. Crumlin Viaduct was finished in May 1857 and was opened for traffic on 1 June 1857, together with a further three miles of single line to Tredegar Junction (now Pontllanfraith) on the Sirhowy Railway. The Sirhowy Railway had not yet been converted to a standard gauge railway,W W Tasker, Railways in the Sirhowy Valley, The Oakwood Press, Tarrant Hinton, 1978 and it was not until 1865, when this was done, that the junction was used for through running.
The Taff Vale Extension line was opened through to Quakers Yard Low Level Junction, connecting there with the Taff Vale Railway, on 11 January 1858. The final section, on from Quakers Yard to Middle Duffryn Junction, joining the Vale of Neath Railway, was opened on 18 April 1864 for goods trains, and on 5 October 1864 for passenger traffic; this was after the NA&HR had been taken over by the West Midland Railway, and that company had itself amalgamated with the Great Western Railway.
The Taff Vale Extension was immensely important strategically, giving access to South Wales Valley lines and their mineral resources, at twelve junctions in 20 miles.
This took on a particular aspect as Aberdare coal came to be regarded as the best quality coal available, and it was extracted in abundant quantities. Coal trains ran from Aberdare to London and Southampton as well as Liverpool; bunkering ocean-going ships at the latter ports was an important part of the business. After the GWR had acquired both the West Midland Railway and the Vale of Neath Railway, it regarded the route from Aberdare to Pontypool as a single entity, and some writers refer to the whole distance to Pontypool as "the Vale of Neath line". However, Middle Duffryn was the boundary between the Vale of Neath Railway network and the Taff Vale Extension line.Gwyn Briwnant Jones and Denis Dunstone, The Vale of Neath Line from Neath to Pontypool Road, Gomer Press, Llandysul, 1996,
The route was exceptionally congested, and the layout and infrastructure were not adequate for some time for the traffic to be handled.
Some relief was achieved when it was possible to divert eastbound mineral trains over the Sirhowy Railway to Newport via Risca. As well as having more favourable gradients, this route avoided the Crumlin Viaduct, which had a weight restriction preventing the use of the heaviest and most powerful locomotives over it.
Relations with the LNWR