Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - A History of Penarth Dock by Roy Thorne . . .

It was on the east side of the dock that the T.V.R. constructed their line and erected ten coal hoists capable of handling 60 tons of coal an hour. On the docks were the wharves of the Dowlais Iron Company, and the coal wharves of Thomas Powell, Duncan and Company, Walter Coffin and Company and John Edwards. Powell and Coffin were the leaders of the coal freighters from the beginning, and Coffin was Deputy Chairman of the T.V.R. from its commencement. Powell was later to become one of the promoters of Penarth Dock and Coffin a political antagonist of Lord Bute.

Robert Stephenson, the arbitrator, had been left with six points of the 1844 agreement to arbitrate on. It was later reported that the railway company had been too late in 1844 with a Bill to authorise them to abandon the Ely Branch, and the Bill was again deposited and enacted in 1846. Heads of Agreement consolidating the documents of 1844 and 1845 had been agreed previously on 12 May 1846.

The Taff Vale Railway Act of 1846 authorised the company to abandon the Ely Branch and to make a line to the east side of the dock with lines to the staiths and sidings and also two branches in the Rhondda Valley. It also authorised the T.V.R. Company to take a lease of part of the Bute Dock for 250 years. Until 1846 the east side of the dock had not been developed except for wharves extending for 300 feet. By the powers authorised by the 1846 Act the T.V.R. made a branch line to the east side, and removed their coal hoists to that side leaving the west side for imports and passenger traffic. This work in total cost £109,000.

It was completed in August 1849 and Robert Stephenson certified that the work had been carried out in accordance with the Agreement dated 12th May 1846 between the T.V.R. Company and the Bute Trustees. [1160]

Bute had coal mines in Durham and used the men from the North East of England with their experience to develop his works in South Wales. Robert Stephenson was such a man. The first engine drivers on the T.V.R. came from the North East and so did Nixon who later, with Powell, was one of the promoters of Penarth Dock.

The second Marquis of Bute died in 1848 leaving a son who was only six months old, and the Glamorgan Estate of the Bute family was then managed by Trustees ; Lord James Stuart, Onesipherous Tyndall Bruce and James Munro McNabb. John Boyle replaced McNabb in 1852 and he became the executive power in Bute commercial affairs.