Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Railway Magazine - Interview with Mr. Ammon Beasley - TVR - 1898 . . . .

This tramroad was famous as being the line on which Trevithick's original steam railway locomotive was tried. Old people in Glamorganshire are very fond of talking of the days when coal was conveyed to Cardiff on the backs of donkeys, but this must have been before the Plymouth tramway came into being.

Mr. James Tilley - Goods Manager, Taff Vale Railway.

As to early difficulties, I know of nothing very much out of the common as applying to the Taff Vale. The scheme was well backed by men of capital and influence, among whom I may mention Mr. (after Sir) John Josiah Guest ; he was one of the first to realise that railway communication was essential to the development of the district, and he was hardly the man to allow any difficulties, whether physical or financial, to stand in his way. Not that the Taff Vale never met with financial troubles ; on the contrary, their monetary difficulties were both severe and prolonged ; but its subsequent unique success as a dividend-earning concern was so exceptional that one is apt to forget that, as in most other instances, they who risked their money in making the railway were not the people who made money out of it.