page_title: Taff Vale Railway
section_title: From 1922
hierarchical_section_title: Taff Vale Railway / The twentieth century / From 1922
caption_attribution_description: English: System map of the Taff Vale Railway, Wales, in 1922
context_page_description: The Taff Vale Railway was a standard gauge railway in South Wales, built by the Taff Vale Railway Company to serve the iron and coal industries around Merthyr Tydfil and to connect them with docks in Cardiff. It was opened in stages in 1840 and 1841.
  In the railway's first years, the coal mining industries expanded considerably and branches were soon opened in the Rhondda valleys and the Cynon Valley. The conveyance of coal for export and for transport away from South Wales began to dominate and the docks in Cardiff and the approach railway became extremely congested. Alternatives were sought and competing railway companies were encouraged to enter the trade.
  In the following decades further branch lines were built and the TVR used "motor cars" from 1903 to encourage local passenger travel.
  From 1922 the TVR was a constituent of the new Great Western Railway at the grouping of the railways, imposing its own character on the larger organisation. The decline in the coal and iron industries took its toll on the mainstay of the network, but passenger trains still operate on most of the main line sections.
context_section_description: Following World War I the government decided to restructure most of the railways of Great Britain into one or other of four large companies. The process was called the "Grouping" and was legislated in the Railways Act 1921. The old Great Western and six of the South Wales railway companies were constituents of the new Great Western Railway. The other smaller railways in the GWR area were "subsidiaries", the old GWR being the largest and the TVR the second largest. The TVR was amalgamated into the putative GWR on 1 January 1922 (effectively from 25 March 1922).
  Immediately prior to the amalgamation, the trading position of the TVR compared to the old GWR was:
  The Grouping meant that the competitive situation with the Rhymney Railway no longer existed and in July 1928 a new connection was installed at Cardiff Queen Street to enable the Rhymney trains to use Queen Street instead of the unsatisfactory Parade station adjacent.
  The production of steel at Dowlais ceased in 1930. The inward haul of iron ore had sustained the Cilfynydd line and the GWR decided that the thinly patronised passenger service was unsustainable so it was taken off and the line closed completely above Cilfynydd from 12 September 1932.
caption: The Taff Vale Railway system in 1922
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