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In
the Beginning
The Wye Valley
Railway opened on the 1st November 1876, linking the south-east
Welsh towns of Chepstow and Monmouth (then both in England) via
stations serving the villages of Tidenham, Tintern, St Briavels
and Redbrook. The line was 14¾ miles long. At Monmouth
Troy station passengers could change for trains serving the towns
of Pontypool (15 miles south-west), Ross-on-Wye (10 miles further
north) and, from 1883, the town of Coleford, 5 miles to the east
in the Forest of Dean.
Ultimately
it lost large sums of money and closed to passengers in 1959.
Freight followed in 1964. The continued occasional use of a miniature
gauge railway at Tintern station means that the line has not
quite been abandoned by rail transport but all the sections still
carrying track are currently being proposed for conversion to
a new cycleway.
The 1840s had
seen the first of two Railway Manias - eras of massive railway
building generating a gigantic unsustainable economic boom. In
the aftermath of the following economic collapse permission was
given for a railway to be built from Pontypool, through Usk and
Monmouth, to Coleford. The Coleford, Monmouth, Usk and Pontypool
Railway (CMUPR) was the first genuine railway to reach Monmouth,
terminating at a small two-platform station on the outskirts
of the town and under the shadow of the Gibraltar Rock.
This new railway
then extended across the river to the village of Wyesham, where
it met the tramway from Coleford and gave up. The next stage
of railway development was going to have to come from a different
direction. In the event it came from two different directions
as, in the middle of the Second Railway Mania and against the
background of the raging Crimean War, two new railways were authorised.
1865 saw Parliament give consent for the Ross and Monmouth Railway
(R&M) to link Monmouth with Ross via Symonds Yat and Kerne
Bridge, while in 1866 the Wye Valley Railway (WVR) was authorised
to link Monmouth with Chepstow via Redbrook, Tintern and Tidenham.
The two lines,
both among the most scenic railways in the country, spent the
next ten years in very different ways. A slight accounting error
by the Mid-Wales Railway destroyed the Overend and Gurney merchant
bank and caused a large recession. The Ross and Monmouth Railway
had started work by then and so slogged on through the recession,
eating money and struggling to raise more. The Wye Valley Railway
management decided to go into hibernation and waited for it to
all blow over.
The Ross and
Monmouth Railway reached Monmouth in 1873 and built a new temporary
station called Monmouth May Hill; the original CMUPR station
obtaining the suffix "Troy" at the same time. Completion
of the R&M to Monmouth Troy followed in mid-1874. The WVR
management, sensing an improved economic situation, began work
on their line. |
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The
Good Years
This new railway
ran through a historic area. Although most of the areas of population
along the line were based around heavy industry, Tintern also
had a ruined Abbey to attract tourists (aside from being a noted
timber and wire producer) and Tidenham, one of the few villages
with any records from Saxon times, was a delightful rural idylic
spot for farming. However, it was rapidly noticed that the railway
did not offer sidings to Redbrook's tinplate works or Whitebrook's
paper mills. It was not tremendously convenient for Tidenham,
the intermediate station of Bigsweir was a mile from any form
of habitation (it was built as the 19th-century equivalent to
a Parkway station) and the line managed to bypass Tintern altogether.
Tintern protested,
running a successful campaign for a branch, which was built at
enormous expense in 1875 to serve the wireworks. Passengers were
told to walk to the station, which was a mile away, as the branch
was for freight only. The mainline was completed a year later
and opened on the 1st of November 1876 with due ceremony. For
most of its life it was the youngest fully-active railway to
Monmouth. The Wireworks branch was unfortunately unable to be
opened before the owners of the wireworks went bankrupt and left
the 1½ mile branch devoid of any traffic.
All three railways
to Monmouth were operated by the Great Western Railway (GWR)
on behalf of their owners. The owners got half of the operating
profit (which was minimal) and rapidly found themselves in financial
difficulties. The CMUPR found itself under Great Western ownership
before the WVR had opened. The Great Western completed the extension
to Coleford, along the route of the Monmouth Tramroad, in 1883.
What should have been a profitable railway was doomed from the
start by a combination of sharp curves, steep gradients, low
speed limits, minimal local traffic (the sole intermediate station,
Newland, was a mile from the village it purported to serve) and
a dispute with the dominant railway company in the Forest of
Dean - the Severn and Wye Railway (S&W). One of a few railway
companies to routinely stand up to an agressor (not that it could
afford to), the S&W failed to come to an agreement with the
GWR over Coleford station. What resulted was two railways which
came within a dozen yards of each other without actually linking
up.
Two periods
of financial difficulty culminated in the WVR being taken over
by the GWR in 1905. The Great War killed off the Coleford branch
and Tidenham station at the beginning of 1917, briefly leaving
the WVR with only three intermediate stations, although it re-opened
the following year. Following the cessation of hostilities, the
Government produced their new plan for the railways.
The Grouping,
as it became known, forced the R&M to sell up to the Great
Western in 1922. Services in the area otherwise continued as
before, with four trains operating each way each day from Ross
to Pontypool and from Monmouth to Chepstow. The Severn and Wye
network, now jointly owned by the Great Western and the newly-formed
London, Midland and Scottish Railway, withdrew most of its passengers
services in 1929 and left Coleford without passenger trains.
The Great Western
decided to try to cut costs and increase traffic in the late
1920s. General re-ordering of the line saw Bigsweir become St
Briavels and Llandogo (later just St Briavels), Tintern become
Tintern for Brockweir (subsequently reduced back to Tintern)
and Redbrook become Redbrook-on-Wye. Halts opened at Whitebrook
and Llandogo in 1927. Brockweir followed in 1929. Penallt and
Wyesham Halts opened in 1931, while Netherhope Halt opened in
1932. Diesel railcars were introduced to the Monmouth branch
lines in the 1930s. The Second World War saw the CMUPR obtain
a new traffic source (a Royal Ordnance Factory at Glascoed, west
of Usk) and saw the lifting of what remained of the Wireworks
branch. |
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The
Not So Good Years
1948 saw the
demise of the Great Western and the creation of British Railways
(BR), which moved all the lines in the area into the Western
Region. Things continued more or less as normal until 1954, when
BR announced that they intended to close the CMUPR, with Monmouth
Troy station being retained (because it was the central point
for Monmouth's railways) along with the section from Glascoed
to Pontypool. The storm of protest persuaded BR to provide a
service of 11 trains each way each day between Monmouth and Pontypool
for a trial period of 6 months. This dramatically increased income
and costs. The service returned to normal in December 1954 and
closure was set for June 1955. An ASLEF strike saw services cease
in late May 1955 and the strike was not settled until the day
after the formal cessation of services.
A special to
celebrate 100 years of railways to Monmouth in 1957 was followed
by ominous rumblings regarding the future of the two surviving
lines. Steam traction was restored to both the R&M and the
WVR in early 1958, with the associated increase in costs, due
to the diesel railcars being life-expired. A formal closure notice
for both railways went out in October 1958 and at the subsequent
inquiry BR set the cost at retaining the lines at £60,000
for the next 3 years. Permission was granted and the date set
for the 5th of January 1959.
Trains for
the R&M had always been based at Ross; trains for the WVR
had lived at Severn Tunnel Junction or Newport. Consequently
the two railways had always operated as separate entities and
connections at Monmouth Troy had always been more by luck than
judgement. This had not been helped by the fact that Troy was
essentially a terminus after June 1955, with both operational
lines coming into the station at the east end. However, for the
final train, on the 4th of January 1959, the two lines were operated
together for the first and last time, as GWR pannier tank locomotives
6439 (leading to Monmouth) and 6412 (leading from Monmouth) worked
an 8-coach special from Chepstow to Ross-on-Wye and back.
The next day
saw the WVR as the only one of the four railways to Monmouth
still connecting the town to the national rail network, as goods
trains were still operating to serve a quarry at Tintern, tinplate
works at Redbrook and a gasworks by Monmouth May Hill. Tintern,
Redbrook and Monmouth Troy also retained basic goods facilities.
May Hill station and the associated section of the R&M closed
in November 1963. The WVR closed to all traffic north of Tintern
Quarry in January 1964. Stubs of the R&M and the Coleford
branch survived a little longer - the last train over R&M
metals to a factory at Lydbrook was in mid-1964, while Whitecliff
Quarry near Coleford despatched its last train over the surviving
parts of the Coleford Branch and the Severn and Wye system in
1967.
While Redbrook
and most of the halts were demolished after closure, Troy stood
derelict until 1986, when the main building was removed to the
preserved Winchcombe station, north of Cheltenham. The goods
shed fell into disrepair and was demolished in 2002. The platform
at Llandogo survived for a few years before the track and platform
were levelled out in the 1970s. St Briavels was taken over by
a fishing group, retaining the main building and the goods shed.
Tintern was eventually taken in hand by the local authority (then
Gwent, now Monmouthshire) who turned it into a picnic site and
refurbished the main building and the signal box.
Tintern Quarry
provided all the traffic for the line for a year and then work
began on digging a new quarry in Tidenham Chase, by Tidenham
station. Most of the woodland was removed and Tidenham station
was demolished, to be reborn as a stone loading area. A lengthy
section of double line was laid north of Tidenham station to
cater for the stone traffic.
Years of decay
took its toll on the structures of the line however. A bridge
over the A48 at Tidenham was rebuilt in 1978, but this was merely
patching the edges. By 1980 Tidenham Tunnel needed a major rebuild.
A special train that year terminated at the long-demolished Netherhope
Halt rather than pass through the tunnel to the Wye Valley and
Tintern Quarry. At the end of 1981 the state of the tunnel and
a road bridge over the railway led BR to the decision to mothball
the line north of Tidenham. Dayhouse Quarry retained its rail
link for 8 more years before the remaining mile of the railway,
still claiming to be in fairly good condition, was taken out
of use in March 1990. |
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Of
Late
The railway
has changed little over the ensuing years. The track from Wye
Valley Junction to Tintern Quarry is still down and in comparatively
good condition, albeit overgrown and with the junction now removed.
Much of the rest of the trackbed is privately owned - mostly
as farmland, forest tracks, unofficial footpaths or areas for
fishing groups. However, the trackbed between the junction and
Tintern, including both tunnels and the Wireworks branch, has
passed into the hands of Sustrans, which has repeatedly expressed
a desire to amend the status quo and install a cycleway between
Tidenham station and Brockweir Halt, with access to Tintern provided
by the Wireworks branch.
The Order of
the Bed, an organisation devoted to increased use of beds and
the pursuit of minimum energy lifestyles and the operator of
this website, has repeatedly expressed opinions on this and proposed
various ways to re-open the railway with through trains from
South Wales.
With the local
authorities of Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire repeatedly expressing
disapproval at Sustrans' developments neither option looks likely
to come to light in the near future. Instead the most intact
of the four railways to Monmouth and a possible future transport
link though the Wye Valley is being left to return to the landscape
through which it was carved over 130 years ago. |
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