Llanelly West to Camarthen

By John Hodge

A pictorial survey of the 20 miles of railway line between the junction station at Llanelly and the county town of Carmarthen in West Wales.

Railway historian John Hodge looks at the development of the lines in West Wales, between these locations, taking in the history of the local industry that was once a feature in this area.

This book covers each station and main location along the route, with good photographic coverage and interesting long captions explaining the location’s significance. Additional text is provided for several locations, giving more historical detail and anecdotal information:

• Llanelly West/Old Castle Crossing
• Pembrey & Burry Port
• Carmarthen Bay Power Station
• Lando Halt
• Kidwelly Flats Halt
• Kidwelly
• Ferryside
• Carmarthen
• Carmarthen Junction
• Carmarthen New Station
• Carmarthen Junction Shed
• Carmarthen Shed

The work is of interest to railway historians and those who accurately model railways, having a good coverage of the subject throughout its pages.

“Narrative summaries of each of the major locations are provided, but the real strength of the book lies in the several hundred photographs which the author has brought together. These include the huge and diverse range of steam motive power to be found at Carmarthen shed over the years, a fine selection of views of Carmarthen station itself, everyday and special trains passing through rural and often highly scenic locations, and useful views of the intermediate stations and signal boxes which will be particularly valuable to the modeller and historian.” —West Somerset Railway Association

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526762504

John Hodge

JOHN HODGE is a former railway manager during the 1960s who, since retirement in 1992, has produced many articles and books on South Wales railways.

Book preview

PREFACE

This is the first in my series on West Wales Railways, following on from my South Wales Main Line series with Wild Swan, and covers the section of line from Llanelly West to Carmarthen. Because of the fact that most pictures and references in the book predate the change of spelling in 1966 from Llanelly to Llanelli, I have decided to stay with the former.

My previous publisher Wild Swan and I worked under an agreement that they only wished to include steam age photographs, but now that I have joined forces with Pen & Sword, I have changed this to include both steam and diesel which has the effect of bringing the coverage more up to date, instead of having to terminate it in the mid-1960s. This now gives me the benefit of including diesel shots in this rather short section of line which enables me to produce prolific illustrations of each location within the section of line covered also in colour. This policy will be continued as I cover the remainder of the West Wales Main Line from Carmarthen to Fishguard Harbour, and the Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven and Neyland branches.

INTRODUCTION

It is just over 20 miles from Llanelly to Carmarthen and but for a short section of downhill at 1 in 124 through Lando Platform, the line is on mostly flat ground, except through Kidwelly where it climbs at 1 in 108. Overall, it is an easy section of line for engines and crews, far more so than the line beyond Carmarthen. There are still three intermediate stations open for passenger business at Pembrey & Burry Port, Kidwelly and Ferryside, but there were previously three others at Lando Halt and Kidwelly Flats Halt (both for the Royal Naval Armaments Depot - RNAD), and Carmarthen Junction, the original main line station for Carmarthen, where there were also an Engine Shed and Goods facilities, closed after the new station opened in the early twentieth century. Carmarthen stands at 220 miles from Paddington via the Badminton route, with a further 40 miles to travel to the original terminus at Neyland and just over 41 miles on to Fishguard.

For railway enthusiasts, the most interesting station on this section was at Pembrey & Burry Port from where the Burry Port & Gwendraeth Valley Railway ran up to Cwmmawr with its own fleet of tank engines and low roofed passenger vehicles after the previous GWR 4 and 6 wheelers and some clerestory roof stock had been withdrawn.

Kidwelly (or Cydweli in Welsh) is a mix of rolling countryside, seashore and woodland and dates from the early twelfth century, receiving its Royal Charter from Henry I. The population is about 3,000, but the annual tourist number is about 30,000. Kidwelly Castle (included in the early Castle Class names as 4098) was built as part of the Norman Conquest in the twelfth century. A large brickworks and tinworks formed the industrial side of the town for many years, but these are now of the past. Kidwelly had its own branch to Coedbach Washery and on to Kidwelly (Tycoch) Junction, where it joined the line from Burry Port to Cwmmawr, closed in 1965. The branch from Kidwelly opened again in 1983, allowing the closure of the line from Kidwelly Junction to Burry Port, and closed in 1996.

Ferryside, as the name implies, sits on the bank of the River Towy and is part of Carmarthen Bay and its cockling industry. In its day, the village relied on the train service for the conveyance of its cockles to Swansea, Cardiff and Newport markets, but this type of traffic is no longer rail borne.

Carmarthen is of course the county town of Carmarthenshire and has claims to be the oldest town in Wales, though its growth stagnated with the industrial development of Swansea and Cardiff. Its strategic importance led to the building of Carmarthen Castle at the end of the eleventh century, again recognised by the GWR in their Castle Class 4076 Carmarthen Castle. The castle was destroyed by Llywelyn the Great in 1215 and rebuilt in 1223, making it one of the finest medieval walled towns in Wales. In 1405, the town was captured and sacked by Owain Glyndwr and suffered badly during the period of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century. In 1546 the two settlements of old and new Carmarthen joined together to form a single town and between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries it was perhaps the chief city of Wales. The industrial development of first Merthyr and then Cardiff and Swansea attracted population from the Carmarthen area, from poorly paid agricultural work to the better paid ironworks and then coal mines. The town was not part of the industrial developments of iron works or coal mines, though small ironworks, lead smelting and tinplate works were set up during the nineteenth century but failed to survive into the twentieth. Neither did the town graduate into the higher echelons of rugby or soccer as did locations further east, though some well-known current names in these fields originate from the town. Though the county town, it has a population of only some 15,000.

Carmarthen is now a railway location totally transformed since the end of steam. The abandonment of parcels traffic, goods sundries and wagonload traffic has reduced it to become a railway of diesel multiple units and trainload freight, the latter oil trains from Milford Haven which pass by at Carmarthen Junction. Long periods of utter silence now occur and those who did not know the railway pre-1980 would hardly believe the level of activity of the station area before then. Hardly any of the high level of facilities provided in 1960 now exist, other than the two main platforms, reduced operationally largely to one. I hope the pictures and descriptions contained in this book help them appreciate what things were like when the railway was a more holistic affair!

LOCATION ANALYSIS

LLANELLY WEST/OLD CASTLE CROSSING

Half a mile west of Llanelly Station, Old Castle Crossing was the point where the former Llanelly & Mynydd Mawr Railway (LMM) crossed the main line west of Llanelly to access the North Dock complex. The Burry Port & Gwendraeth Valley Railway had a junction with this line at Sandy Junction. This was a highly industrialised area dominated by the Llanelly Steelworks whose private siding agreement dated from July 1920. In 1960, it was bought by the Duport Group and remained in business until 1981.

Llanelly Old Castle Crossing with the former LMM line still in place crossing the main line at right angles. The signal box on the left was replaced in June 1962, having opened in 1900. The Duports Steelworks train is awaiting the signal to cross the main line into the North Dock complex. This photograph is thought to have been taken in 1958. (Michael Hale/GW Trust)

As the amount of use made of the North Dock declined, it became possible to divert the traffic from the ex-LMM line through Llanelly and on to Llandilo Junction and Swansea Docks. This coincided with the concentration of shipment coal at Barry Docks for bituminous coal and Swansea Docks for anthracite. In October 1963, the ex-LMM line was recovered so that the main line became plain line through the former crossing and by 1973 the point became known as Llanelly West Junction, with a much-rationalised layout from which the loops on the Llanelly side of the junction have been removed.

The former Llanelly Steelworks, opened in 1907, was bought by the Duport Group in 1960 but hit financial problems in the 1970s from which it never recovered and the works closed in 1981. The site was abandoned and remained derelict for several years. The eyesore derelict works can be seen in some of the pictures provided. The site was eventually cleared and reclaimed, being transformed into Sandy Water Park which can again be seen in several of the photographs that follow. This has formed an important part of the regeneration of the previously highly industrialised Llanelly coastline and led to the creation of the Millennium Coastal Park.

The River Loughor rises to the north of Loughor in the area around Morfa Mawr and opens out considerably south of Llanelly with the Gower peninsula on its south bank. As the area around the previous Llanelly Steelworks is