The Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway was a broad gauge railway line in Wales that was intended to connect Carmarthen on the South Wales Railway with Cardigan. In fact, it was unable to raise the necessary capital and was loss-making from the time of opening the first short section of its line in 1860, and it was in receivership for much of its life. It eventually reached Llandysul in 1864 but was not extended further during its independent existence.
Its station at Carmarthen became the focus of several independent cross-country railways which made junctions with it, and for a time the toll charges for the short distances used by their trains was useful income, but the line never became solvent and it sold its concern to the Great Western Railway in 1882. The GWR eventually extended from Llandyssil to Newcastle Emlyn, which improved the use of the line somewhat. Meanwhile, another railway was built to Cardigan from Whitland, and the C&CR line did not extend beyond Newcastle Emlyn.
Passenger trains ceased operating on the Newcastle Emlyn branch in 1952 and on the rest of the line in 1965 apart from access to the creamery north of Pencader until 1973. The exception is the short stub into Carmarthen town that diverges from the through-line from Swansea and is used by all passenger trains serving Carmarthen.
South Wales Railway
The Great Western Railway opened its line between London and Bristol in 1841. A branch to Gloucester and Cheltenham was built by the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway. The GWR encouraged the formation of what was to become the South Wales Railway to build a line from near Gloucester through Cardiff and Swansea to Fishguard. The South Wales Railway Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. cxc) obtained royal assent on 4 August 1845. The line opened progressively: from Swansea (Landore) to Carmarthen on 11 October 1852 and to Haverfordwest and Neyland on 2 January 1854. Radically changed economic conditions put reaching Fishguard in abeyance.E. T. MacDermot, History of the Great Western Railway: vol I: 1833 - 1863: part II, published by the Great Western Railway, London, 1927
The position of the town of Carmarthen on the River Towy and the hills to the west of the town made the design of a through railway difficult, and the decision was taken to pass south of Carmarthen. The SWR built a station adjacent to the Pensarn to Cwmffryd road (now A484). In common with the Great Western Railway, the South Wales Railway was a broad gauge line.
The South Wales Railway later merged with the Great Western Railway and became for all practical purposes part of the Great Western on 1 January 1862.E. T. MacDermot, History of the Great Western Railway: volume I part 1: 1833 - 1863, published by the Great Western Railway, London, 1927, page 434
Bold ideas Connection to a railway hugely improved the economic prosperity of a town, enabling goods to be brought in and out cheaply. The terrain north and west of Carmarthen was in need of a railway connection and the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway was planned. The first promoters of the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway planned to build a line from Carmarthen to Cardigan, and build a new deep-water port there, opening up shipping routes from west Wales. In 1853 this scheme was widened to include a line to Kidwelly and Cross Hands, connecting the mining and quarrying on Mynydd Mawr. Late in that year, it became plain that these ambitions were beyond the expected financial resources of the company, and a more modest scheme, to build from Carmarthen to Newcastle Emlyn, was formulated.M R C Price, The Gwendraeth Valleys Railway: Kidwelly to Mynydd-y-Garreg, Oakwood Press, Usk, 1997,
Authorisation
Accordingly, a bill for the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway went to Parliament, but proposing a line only as far as Newcastle Emlyn, a distance of 26 miles, at this stage. The (17 & 18 Vict. c. ccxviii) obtained royal assent on 1 July 1854, with share capital of £300,000.E F Carter, An Historical Geography of the Railways of the British Isles, Cassell, London, 1959 The company was to build its own "Carmarthen" station closer to the town than the SWR station, and a bridge was needed to cross the River Towy. The line was to be to the broad gauge, consistent with the gauge of the South Wales Railway.D S M Barrie, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: volume 12: South Wales, David St John Thomas, Nairn, 1994, E T MacDermot, History of the Great Western Railway: volume II: 1863 - 1921, published by the Great Western Railway, London, 1931Brief History of the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway at the Disused Stations website, http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/n/newcastle_emlyn/Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway at John Speller's Web Pages http://spellerweb.net/rhindex/UKRH/GreatWestern/Broadgauge/Cardigan.htmlTom Ferris, Lost Lines of Wales: Aberystwyth to Carmarthen, Graffeg Press, 2016,
The act permitted the raising of capital, but actually securing commitment to investing proved difficult; an extension of time was authorised during 1856 but it was not until March 1857 that enough money had been raised to start work. The engineer was Joseph Cubitt.
In 1859, the company considered altering its track gauge from broad gauge to standard gauge (at the time referred to as narrow-gauge), to reduce costs. This was opposed by the South Wales Railway, which feared that it would encourage a connection with a rival with standard gauge lines. A bill authorising this was passed in the House of Commons but the C&CR withdrew the proposal on receiving certain working undertakings from the SWR, and continued construction in the authorised broad gauge.
First openings The short distance from the junction with the SWR (Myrtle Hill Junction) to the C&CR Carmarthen station was opened on 1 March 1860; the South Wales Railway station was renamed Carmarthen Junction on the same day.Stations at Carmarthen, in Railway Magazine, April 1961, page 294 It had been intended to open on 1 November 1859 but the mode of the junction was objected to by the SWR engineer. This was followed by opening of the line as far as Conwil on 3 September 1860; there was an intermediate station at Bronwydd Arms. The C&CR relied on the SWR to work its line, and friction developed when the C&CR claimed that the charges for this were excessive. Whatever the truth of that, the C&CR was not earning enough to pay the working expenses and the service was suspended after only four months' operation, on 31 December 1860. There were outstanding debts to the SWR which the C&CR was unable to pay, and the SWR seized £1,343 worth of rails and sold them.
The C&CR now determined to work the line itself, and hired two 4-4-0 tank engines; it reopened its line on 12 August 1861.The Disused Stations history gives 15 August 1861.
Construction further northwards was difficult; Pencader tunnel was especially troublesome. Work had started in the Spring of 1857, but in the Autumn of 1861 the contractor abandoned the workings, and a substitute contractor had to be found. The company obtained parliamentary authorisation for a revival of the powers to build to Newcastle Emlyn on 29 July 1862 and for an extension to Cardigan, by the (26 & 27 Vict. c. clxvi) of 1 July 1863. The company was hopelessly insolvent and never managed to construct either of these sections in its own right.
The line was opened as far as Pencader on 12 October 1863, but difficulty with the passenger authorisation was hinted at:
Evidently "obtaining the permission of the Board of Trade" proved difficult, and the line from Conwil to Pencader was opened to passenger traffic on 28 March 1864, with an intermediate station at Llanpumpsaint. MacDermot says that this opening "was made in defiance of the Board of Trade, who ordered a postponement, but do not appear to have taken any effective steps to enforce their order".It seems not to be possible to confirm MacDermot's remarkable assertion.MacDermot, volume II, page 344
The line was opened onwards to Llandyssil on 3 June 1864. There were four trains each way daily, generally to and from the South Wales Railway station at Carmarthen Junction.
Ambitious plans but financial difficulties
Undeterred by its financial situation the company now obtained an act of Parliament, (27 & 28 Vict. c. xiii), allowing it to build from Kidwelly to Velindre; and another act of Parliament, the (28 & 29 Vict. c. clxx), from Kidwelly to Pontyberem in 1865; accessed in the Gwendraeth Fach and Gwendraeth Fawr valleys respectively. There were considerable mineral deposits at these locations, chiefly limestone in the former case. The finances of the C&CR were so confused that it was found impossible to proceed, and a shareholders' meeting was held on 11 July 1866 to agree to the separation of the scheme from the C&CR. A bill was prepared:
Financial mismanagement was clearly to blame:
The shareholders agreed with the separation of the Gwendraeth branches, and a separate company, the Gwendreath Valleys Railway, was incorporated on 20 June 1866, to build the line to Mynydd-y-Garreg in the Gwendraeth Fach, and the Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway was formed from an amalgamation of the Kidwelly and Burry Port Railway and the Burry Port company, also adopting the powers for the Gwendraeth Fawr line on 30 April 1866.Raymond E Bowen, Burry Port and Gwendreath Valley Railway and its Antecedent Canals: volume 1: the Canals, Oakwood Press, Usk, 2001, R W Miller, The Burry Port & Gwendreath Valley Railway and its Antecedent Canals: Volume Two: The Railway and Dock, Oakwood Press, Usk, 2009,
Declining to take on new liabilities was all very well, but it did not improve the trading losses and existing indebtedness. Interest payments on bank loans of three-quarters of a million pounds could not be sustained, and the company went into receivership in November 1864, continuing to trade under administration.
Llanelly Railway and Dock Company
The Llanelly Railway and Dock Company had built a line from Llanelly towards the Amman Valley and later extended it to Llandeilo. In 1864 it opened a line from Llandeilo to Carmarthen, actually making a junction with the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway at Abergwili Junction, about a mile north of Carmarthen. The Llanelly line was narrow gauge (later referred to as standard gauge) and by arrangement in the Llanelly Railway and Dock Act 1862 (25 & 26 Vict. c. clxi) laid additional rails from Abergwili Junction to Carmarthen C&CR station to enable their trains to run. Llanelly goods trains started running on this section on 13 November 1864 and passenger trains from 1 June 1865. Through a series of political machinations, the Carmarthen section of the Llanelly Railway and Dock company eventually became part of the London and North Western Railway in 1891.Michael Denman, Railways Around Llanelli: A History of the Railways of East Carmarthenshire, Published by The Wider View, Huntingdon, 2000, Gwyn Brynant Jones and Denis Dunstone, The Origins of the LMS in South Wales, Gomer Publishers, Llandysul, 1999,
Manchester and Milford Railway