Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway

The Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway was a Welsh railway company incorporated in 1882 to connect the upper Rhondda Fawr valley with Swansea, mainly to carry coal and other minerals to Swansea docks; an early plan to reach Swansea directly from Briton Ferry was refused, and the line instead required boring the nearly two-mile Rhondda Tunnel. It opened from Treherbert through the tunnel to Port Talbot and Aberavon in 1890, with extensions to Swansea and Neath completed in 1894 and 1895, and the Great Western Railway took over its operation from 1906 under guaranteed dividends before formally absorbing the company in the 1922 to 1923 Grouping; a tunnel collapse in 1968 closed the upper section, though short stretches near Briton Ferry and in Swansea docks remain in use. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/