Rhymney Railway

The Rhymney Railway was a railway company in South Wales built to carry coal, iron and other minerals from the collieries and ironworks of the Rhymney Valley to docks at Cardiff. It opened its main line in 1858 and also ran a limited passenger service. The company initially depended on the parallel Taff Vale Railway to reach Cardiff, but built its own independent line into the city in 1871 to gain greater operational control. It later built two joint lines with the Great Western Railway, the Taff Bargoed line in 1876 and the Quakers Yard and Merthyr joint line in 1882, and maintained a working relationship with the London and North Western Railway. Despite its modest size, the Rhymney Railway was profitable for most of its existence and paid strong returns to shareholders. Mineral traffic declined through the twentieth century, particularly from the 1970s onward. The company was absorbed into the Great Western Railway in the 1922 grouping and nationalized in 1948. Its former main line between Rhymney and Cardiff remains in heavy use today as a local passenger route, though freight traffic has largely ended. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/