page_title: Llanelly Railway
section_title: Opening to Swansea
hierarchical_section_title: Llanelly Railway / Opening to Swansea
caption_attribution_description: English: Swansea Victoria Station, with train. View westward away from buffers, towards Pontardulais, Llandilo, Llandovery, Llandrindod Wells and Craven Arms; terminus of ex-London &amp; North Western Central Wales line from Craven Arms. This station along with the final section from Pontadulais was closed on 27/6/64, the service being diverted to Llanelli and now after reversal runs on from there to Swansea High Street. Here Stanier Class 5 4-6-0 No. 45298 has arrived at 16.17 on the 12.00 through from Shrewsbury, with 28 stops - hardly an express.
context_page_description: The Llanelly Railway and Dock Company was an early Welsh railway system. It opened its first short line and a wet dock at Llanelly in 1834, and soon went on to build a longer line from Llanelly to serve pits in the Amman Valley, and then on to Llandilo, reached in 1857. The Llanelly company leased and worked the Vale of Towy Railway on to Llandovery, from 1858.
  Responding to competitive pressure the company obtained authorisation to connect its network to Swansea and Carmarthen, but the failure of a contractor put the company into financial difficulty, and a financial reconstruction later led to the Swansea and Carmarthen lines passing to the London and North Western Railway, while the original core system was taken over by the Great Western Railway.
  The line from Swansea to Llandovery became part of the Central Wales Line connecting to Shrewsbury and the north-west, but after the 1960s only the Llanelli to Llandovery line and short colliery connections in the Amman Valley remained in use.
  Before 1971 many place names had Anglicised spelling. The railway system was slow to convert the names of railway locations. For consistency, this article generally uses contemporary spellings.
context_section_description: On 9 November 1865 mineral traffic started on the Swansea line, although volumes were small at first. The failure of the financing scheme had forced the Llanelly company into borrowing at high rates of interest. Moreover, the poor income on the Carmarthen line further reduced the company's trading situation. The New Lines section of the Llanelly Company, which was separately financed, was plunged into financial difficulty, and it went into administration in January 1867.
  Passenger operation on the Swansea line started on 14 December 1867. The first through train from Llandovery to Swansea ran on 1 January 1868. The Penclawdd branch from Gower Road at the same time to serve local collieries (and later the Elba steel works).
caption: A former LMS Stanier Black 5 at Swansea Victoria.
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