page_title: Wye Valley Railway
section_title: Today's Remnants
hierarchical_section_title: Wye Valley Railway / Today's Remnants
caption_attribution_description: Tintern signal box and picnic area
context_page_description: The Wye Valley Railway was a standard gauge railway that ran for nearly 15 miles along the Lower Wye Valley between the towns of Chepstow and Monmouth, crossing several times between Wales and England. Opened on 1 November 1876, it was leased to, and worked by, the Great Western Railway, before being fully absorbed by the GWR in 1905.
  The line was built with the hope of becoming part of a through trunk route between Bristol and the industrial Midlands, a development which never took place. Although tourism provided some new passenger business in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, the line's income was always weak.
  After nationalisation, British Railways reviewed its viability and withdrew the passenger service on 5 January 1959. A limited goods and mineral service continued until 1964, after which residual traffic continued on the southern end of the route to Tintern Quarry, until 1981, and Dayhouse Quarry, near Tidenham, until 1990.
context_section_description: Many WVR structures are still in existence. The three former railway bridges across the River Wye are still standing: Penallt Viaduct, which now carries a footpath between Redbrook and Penallt, the Wireworks Branch bridge, also in use as a footpath, and the impressive 21-arch viaduct at Monmouth, which carried the railway over the river, is still in place though the central metal section has been removed and it is inaccessible to pedestrians. The station building and goods shed at St Briavels Station are still mainly intact.
  Tintern Station building is (2017) in as a visitor centre.
  Monmouth Troy station building was removed from Monmouth and rebuilt brick by brick at Winchcombe station on the heritage Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway.
caption: The picnic site and former signal box at Tintern Station in 2008
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