Cardiff Railway

The Cardiff Railway was a Welsh railway company created in 1897 when the trustees of the Marquess of Bute, who already ran the profitable Bute Docks in Cardiff, obtained the Cardiff Railway Act and renamed their dock company to build a line from Pontypridd to their docks. The trustees had grown frustrated that established railway companies, especially the Taff Vale Railway, were profiting from carrying coal to docks the Bute interests already owned, and sought their own rail access to that coalfield traffic. A junction with the Taff Vale Railway at Treforest saw only a single mineral train cross it in 1909 before legal challenges stopped further use, leaving the company with an expensive line that never reached the collieries beyond Pontypridd. The Cardiff Railway became part of the Great Western Railway in 1923, and the low-key passenger service it operated, cut back to Coryton in 1931, continues to run today.