Volume Thirteen - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - even more aspects - Articles from the Great Western Railway Magazine - 1922 - 1948 . . . .

The following pages in this Chapter have been selected from the digital archive of the Great Western Railway Magazine commencing from when the Taff Vale Railway (TVR) was amalgamated within the Great Western Railway (GWR) as part of the Railways Act of 1921. Many thanks to the Didcot Railway Centre. [1348] [1349]

1922 - August - The Lines Absorbed by the Great Western Railway - No. 4 The Taff Vale Railway.

By the amalgamations under the Railway Act, 1921, the Great Western Railway has brought within its capacious fold some of the most historically interesting local systems of transport in these islands. Amongst them is the Taff Vale Railway, probably the best known of all, whose story tells of the wonderful development of the South Wales coalfield, and of its own unique vicissitudes and triumphs, arising out of industrial struggles which have made its name conspicuous in railway annals. Fortunately, the disappointments and struggles are now relegated to the niche of bygone experiences, and to-day the Taff Vale is one of the brightest gems in the sceptre wielded by the Great Western Railway Company.

At the close of the eighteenth century the Welsh iron trade, centred in and around Merthyr Tydfil, was booming, and the farsighted pioneer ironmasters brought about the construction of the Glamorgan and the Aberdare canals between the years 1790 and 1798. That was the genesis of improved transport in industrial South Wales, for the Glamorgan Canal connected the furnaces at Merthyr Tydfil with the harbour of Cardiff. A recorded output of 39,558 tons from Glamorgan and Monmouthshire ironworks in 1796 attained a production of 277,643 tons in 1830, and the facilities provided by the Glamorgan Canal — an engineering feat worthy of proud boast in those days — gave rise to visions of great dealings with the markets beyond. In 1831 the Glamorgan Canal alone carried 70,333 tons of iron ; in 1834 this had increased to 111,012 tons.