Volume Two - The Era of Optimism, Investment & Development - Coal and coal export logistics . . .

This c.1909 photograph of s.s. 'Cluden' illustrates the limitations of the original fixed centres coal tips.

It never ceases to amaze me, that in these days, long before the advent of mobile telephones and the digital age, how well organised and coordinated the collieries, railway, docks and ships had to be to operate at all. For example, the National Archives at London [142] hold an agreement dated March 1907 between the TVR and the National Telephone Co. Ltd. for a public telephone call office near the tipping office at Penarth Dock.

	A notice from the Taff Vale Railway issued on the 13th February 1905 imposing charges on empties due to the congestion at the sidings. A gentle reminder and encouragement to recycle is nothing new!

By 1907 the Taff Vale Railway owned 224 steam locomotives, 18 steam motors, 363 passenger coaches and 2,542 merchandise wagons. These wagons carried 19.8 million tons (18 million tons being coal) and they conveyed between 11 and 12 million passengers that year on their 124¼ miles of track.

Shipments at Cardiff were, by now, notorious for extended delays. Penarth identified the issues and set out to capitalise on the inefficiencies at Penarth Dock and the Ely Tidal Harbour infrastructure and of those delays just across the bay.