page_title: Llanelly Railway
section_title: The Swansea Vale Railway
hierarchical_section_title: Llanelly Railway / The Swansea Vale Railway
caption_attribution_description: English: Glanrhyd station (remains), 1999. View SW, towards Llandeilo and Llanelli/Swansea: ex-GW&amp;LNW Joint Vale of Towy section of the ex-LNW/GW Mid-Wales route, Craven Arms - Swansea. The station was closed 7/3/55, and the house is in private occupation. The line has survived as the 'Heart of Wales' route, with trains running via Llanelli(reverse) to Swansea High Street after the ex-LNW Pontardulais - Swansea Victoria line was closed on 15/6/64.
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: The Swansea Vale Railway had started life as a mineral line running north-east from Swansea. In 1861 it obtained Parliamentary authorisation to extend to Brynamman, approaching from the east; this part of the line was known as the Swansea Vale Extension Railway, and it opened on 1 January 1864 for mineral traffic.
  By the end of 1864 through operation between the Swansea Vale Extension and the Llanelly Railway was established at Brynamman, and the two lines formed a significant through route for goods traffic from Swansea to Liverpool. In May 1864 a passenger service to Brynamman was established on the Swansea Vale line. The Llanelly company decided to start its own passenger service to Brynamman, extending the existing Garnant branch service. The Board of Trade were asked to carry out the necessary formal inspection to approve passenger working, but the proposed method of operation, by telegraph and block system, was not considered safe for passenger operation on a single line. A further inspection in March 1865 noted that the terminus station at Brynamman was to be on a gradient of 1 in 57, an arrangement also considered unsafe, and authorisation was again postponed.
  Authorisation for passenger working on the Llanelly line was given on 20 March 1865; it is not recorded how the considerable gradient easement was achieved. It appears that the two companies had their Brynamman stations alongside one another. The Llanelly company announced that passenger services would start on 20 March 1865; Garnant station appears to have been closed, and was relocated "half a mile down the branch" and re-opened at the same time. The SVR was authorised to open its passenger service to Brynamman on 27 February 1868, and agreement was reached for interchange arrangements at the station. The Swansea Vale Railway was absorbed by the Midland Railway.
caption: Glanrhyd station in 1999
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