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

The following is an edited section of an article published within the March 1924 edition of the Great Western Railway Magazine [1348] [1349] entitled 'The Days when Locomotives burned no Coal'  by Mr. Alfred Beasley.

In 1864 I was transferred from another office at Swindon to that of Mr. Joseph Armstrong, who had just been appointed locomotive superintendent in succession to Gooch. One of my earliest jobs was to write out a new charterparty for the steamer Alma of 600 tons. That document was a renewal of one about to expire, and its effect was to engage the services of the boat for one year, to carry coal from Penarth to Bristol. Now at the date of this charter, a continuous rail route from Cardiff to Bristol, via Gloucester and Swindon, had been open twelve years. If it was still thought best to bring coal from South Wales to Bristol by sea, it was not for want of alternative. A daily locomotive coal train was running from the Ely Valley to Swindon, chiefly for the supply of the factory and rail-mill; part of its load was sent on to stations above and below Swindon, but, I presume, not to Bristol.

The fact that the Alma’s port of shipment was Penarth points to the Taff Vale collieries as the source of the Bristol supply. That valley was then the best developed and its coal excellent in quality. But the Taff Vale Railway was always narrow gauge, while the South Wales was, like the Great Western, broad gauge, and there was no effective connection between the two lines. The rail route would, therefore, have involved, not only a long haul, but transhipment of the coal at Cardiff ; also the South Wales Railway was, till 1864, an independent line, although worked by the Great Western, and a rate would have to be paid.

As against these considerations, the sea route involved shipment of the coal at Penarth and its discharge into trucks at Bristol. Bridges would prevent the Alma from approaching Temple Meads, and she must have discharged somewhere adjacent to the harbour line.

I believe the Alma’s charter was not renewed after 1865, so the rail route prevailed in the end. I think it only maintained itself so long as it did by "force of habit.” At the outset and until the South Wales was opened (1852) there had been no choice of route. Whether at that time coal was carried to Bristol and there turned into coke, or whether it was shipped already in the form of coke, I cannot say. I think the latter most likely. . .