Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Railway Magazine - Interview with Mr. Ammon Beasley - TVR - 1898 . . . .

Mr. Geo. Thos. Sibberling, M.Inst.C.E. - Chief Engineer, Taff Vale Railway.

"I see the original Taff Vale Railway was incorporated June 21st, 1836, for a railway from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff Docks. It was, I believe, one of the earliest public lines in Wales? Can you give me some information concerning the early difficulties - Parliamentary, engineering, and other - that the pioneers of the movement had to overcome?"

"The date of incorporation, which you rightly quote, shows that the Taff Vale is the premier railway of Wales. From your using the term public railway, I suppose you have in your mind, as a predecessor even of the Taff, the railway or tramway which is remembered in the district a short length of which still exists in Merthyr as a private railway, and its formation may be traced for miles as the Plymouth or Hill's tramway, which was constructed to carry coal and iron from the Plymouth collieries and the ironworks in the vicinity of Merthyr to the Aberdare Canal, at a point near the Taff Vale station, formerly called Aberdare Junction, but now known as Abercynon.