Volume Thirteen - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - even more aspects - Articles from the Great Western Railway Magazine - 1922 - 1948 . . . .

No apology is offered for the above preface and its references to the Glamorgan Canal. They link up the ultimate network of Taff Vale Railway lines with the time — less than a century ago — when the Welsh coalfield depended on mules and a many-locked canal for its development, and as the present is only a reflex of the past, much is to be gained from a knowledge of what has gone before.

A perusal of the records of the Company discloses a long series of administrative and financial difficulties, which the directors almost despaired of overcoming, so much so that an Act was obtained in 1844 empowering the Company to lease the railway and works (subject to the consent of three-fifths at least of the proprietors at a specially convened general meeting) to any company or person willing to accept them for a term not exceeding twenty-one years. Strong opposition was, however, forthcoming on the part of the proprietors, and at a subsequent meeting it was explained that the directors had abandoned the idea of leasing the property.

In 1846, coincident with an agreement with the Marquess of Bute, fortune began to smile on the concern. Under this agreement the Taff Vale Company obtained the sole right of shipping coal by means of staiths on the east side of the West Bute Dock at Cardiff, one of the conditions being that the branch of the Taff Vale Railway to the River Ely should be abandoned and that all coal arising on the Taff Vale system should be shipped at the Bute Dock.

In 1848 powers were obtained from Parliament to lease the Aberdare Railway, authorised in 1845, which proved to be a valuable feeder. In the following year an Act was obtained by the Dowlais Iron Company to make a railway from Merthyr to Dowlais, commencing at a junction with the Taff Vale Railway. From now on the affairs of the Company were most prosperous, the traffic steadily increasing both in passengers and goods. The staple trade — coal and coke — of which the Company conveyed only 41,669 tons in 1841, had in 1850 reached 594,222 tons, and in 1860 this traffic totalled 2,132,995 tons. There is probably no other railway in the kingdom that can show so extraordinary a record of increase in so brief a period.

The most important development during this time had been the extension of the line in the Rhondda Valley, where the exploitation of the mineral resources had the greatest possible effect on the prosperity of the Company and led to its becoming one of the best dividend paying railways in Great Britain.