Volume Six - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - Select Aspects - The end of the line for the Taff Vale Railway - 1921

During WWI (1914-18) the government took control of the 120 or so privately owned railway companies of Great Britain. At the end of hostilities this control continued until 1921 when David Lloyd George introduced a Bill to 'Group' these companies into four large concerns. In South Wales it meant that the Great Western Railway Company was now the largest dock owner in the world and held control of the railway companies which had fought relentlessly for the rights to carry the mineral wealth of the valleys to the markets of the world!