Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway

The Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway was a Welsh railway company established by an 1859 act of Parliament to connect the towns named in its title. Unable to reach Merthyr directly, it instead acquired the old Rumney Railway plateway, which gave it access to the docks at Newport and turned it into a mineral-hauling line; its Brecon section opened in 1863 and a separate Rhymney-to-Newport section in 1865. Chronically short of money and burdened by severe gradients, the company nonetheless survived until the 1923 railway grouping folded it into the Great Western Railway, with passenger services ending by 1962 and only a short quarry connection at Machen still in use as of 2020.