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BURRY PORT & GRENDRAETH VALLEY RAILWAY
The Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley
Railway (BP&GVR) was a mineral
railway company that constructed
a railway line in Carmarthenshire, by
conversion of a canal, to connect
collieries and limestone pits to the
sea at Kidwelly. It extended its
network to include Burry Port,
Trimsaran and a brickworks at Pwll,
later extending to Sandy near Llanelli.
For a time the company worked
the separate Gwendraeth Valleys
Railway. The BP&GVR was notable
because of the very low height of
some overbridges, a legacy of the
canal conversion.
It was completely dependent on
the economy of the mineral industries
it served and due to depression
in them, it was for many years in
administration. In the final years of the nineteenth century those industries
developed considerably and the fortunes of the BP&GVR improved as well,
paying 10% dividends for several years, before absorption by the Great
Western Railway in 1922.
For some time the line carried miners to their place of work, and their families
to market, and from 1913 the Company carried the general public in
passenger trains.
After 1945 mineral extraction in the area declined steeply; passenger
operation ceased in 1953, and in the 1960s most of the network closed
progressively as pits closed. The final short section at Kidwelly closed in
1998.
Source: Wikipedia