Hodge John - Railways and Industry in the Western Valley

FRONT COVER: The Daily service of oil tankers from Llandarcy Oil Refinery, Swansea to Ebbw Vale Steelworks stands on the Up Loop behind the Up Ebbw Vale Platform at Aberbeeg behind Ebbw Jn.s 7238 on 14th April 1962. (W.G. Sumner)

BACK COVER (top): Waunllwyd Colliery sidings in 1907 facing north with Waunllwyd North Signal Box on the right. All the wagons are branded E V, this being one of the Ebbw Vale Co.s main collieries.

BACK COVER (bottom): A Class 37 reverses out of the original yard serving the new Tinplate & Galvanising Plant in 1987 before a direct access to and from the main line was constructed. (Allan Pym)

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

Pen & Sword Transport

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Copyright John Hodge, 2017

The right of John Hodge to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor by way of trade or otherwise shall it be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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I DEDICATE THIS volume to my friends in the Monmouthshire Valleys who have helped with photographs, information and in other ways in the production of this series, Allan Pym of Ebbw Vale, Malcolm James of Rogerstone, Ray Caston of Bassaleg, Ray Viney of Newport, Gerald Davies of Tredegar, Alastair Warrington of Garndiffaith, Stan Brown and David Bowen of Abergavenny, and also across the border in Glamorgan, Keith Jones of Mountain Ash for all the negatives he has loaned me over the years, Richard Woodley of Pontyclun and Mike Back of Efail Isaf.

Thanks to all those who have helped with the provision of photographs and material for this volume, especially to R.A. (Tony) Cooke, Ray Lawrence, Allan Pym, the West Sussex Record Office who now hold the W.G. Sumner Collection, the Ebbw Vale Works Museum, former work colleagues David Maidment and Stan Judd (Station Masters at Aberbeeg and Ebbw Vale 1964-65), Malcolm James, Alastair Warrington, Kidderminster Railway Museum for the W.Potter prints, and that supreme photographer and good friend, the late Michael Mensing.

SOURCES:

Burchell Rodger, Thesis on Victoria Ironworks 1997

Cooke, R.A: GWR/WR Track Layouts

Hill, Geoffrey & Green, Gordon Industrial Locomotives of Gwent

Lawrence, Ray: Ebbw Valley Colliery Publications

Massey, Phillip, Portrait of a Mining Town 1937

Skillern, William J., The Brynmawr & Western Valleys Railway, 1958 Railway Magazine

Warrender, M.G: The History of Ebbw Vale Works

Article from Times Weekly Edition July 1938 on Transport of

Plant & Materials to Ebbw Vale New Works

Ebbw Vale The Works Supplement No. 4 Dec. 2008

1959 Working Timetable Newport District

THE APPROACHES TO Aberbeeg were a convenient place to make the break between Volumes 1 and 2, as it enables Aberbeeg to be dealt with as a complete entity here. This volume therefore covers the full range of activities that took place at Aberbeeg, the former engine shed to the south, the yard, passenger station and the long-closed collieries. Almost all freights needed banking beyond Aberbeeg, unless merely composed of empties, though more on the Ebbw Vale route (Ebbw Fawr) than on the Brynmawr (Ebbw Fach). Though trains had to ease around the curves at Aberbeeg itself, once clear, the train engine and banker(s) would be opened up to produce a crescendo of steam or diesel power which echoed throughout the Valley and could be heard long after the train was out of sight.

THE INTRODUCTION TO Part 1 dealt with the history of the Monmouthshire Railway & Canal Company, and readers are recommended to study this for the full story of railway development throughout the Western Valley.

It was the upper reaches of the Western Valley (as in other Valleys) which had seen the development of iron and coal workings during the early nineteenth century, especially in such places as Nantyglo in the Ebbw Fach where the iron works had once been a world leader, Beaufort and Ebbw Vale. During the Victorian period much of Aberbeeg depots workload would have centred around the area of Nantyglo, Coalbrookvale, Blaina, Abertillery and Cwmtillery. However, the abandonment of iron making in the area, partly replaced by tinplate production, but overtaken by the huge increase of steel production at Ebbw Vale, produced a much decreased workload by the mid twentieth century. Collieries had been closed through exhaustion, ironworks long closed and tinplate works unable any longer to compete with the Ebbw Vale Works. In the Ebbw Fach, the colliery production from the mid-1960s onwards became confined to the larger pits such as at Six Bells just north of Aberbeeg, Cwmtillery, Rose Heyworth at Abertillery, and South Griffin at Blaina. However two of these would be gone as individual production units within 10 years, leaving only Six Bells and Abertillery New Mine (the former Rose Heyworth and Cwmtillery amalgamated underground) to be served by rail on that line. There was, though, some small activity by Ryans Industrial Fuels at the former Beynons Colliery site at Blaina until 1969.

In the Ebbw Fawr, the original complex of collieries in the Cwm and Ebbw Vale areas, originally owned by the Ebbw Vale Iron & Coal Co., gradually declined due to exhaustion, and underground linkage, especially at Cwm where there were originally at least three production points. These ultimately reduced to just one at Marine, and much simplified the railway servicing requirement, which by the 1960s was bringing Six Bells coal to Marine for washing. This was blended with Marine production and then transported to Ebbw Vale, Llanwern and Margam Steelworks, before the flow from Six Bells passed by underground link in 1977. Thereafter it was to supply empties to Marine for outwards loading, culminating in the use of MGR trains for supply to Llanwern.