Britain’s Depots – Welsh Stabling Points
South Wales was once littered with small stabling points, a hark back to steam days and the coal industry, as Alex Fisher discovers.
South Wales was once littered with small stabling points, a hark back to steam days and the coal industry, as Alex Fisher discovers.
Back when escapades of a full weekend of shed bashing were undertaken, the stabling points of the South Wales Valleys were a real adventure. Whether it was an organised coach tour, or with mates on trains or in cars, it took some determination and organisation to visit many of the smaller stabling points, especially those hidden away on freightonly lines. Many were a hive of activity that saw millions of tons of coal worked from local colliers to the main docks, steel works and power stations of the South Wales coastline. With so many to detail, just a few will be profiled per article over several issues, starting with Aberdare, Rhymney, Dowlais Cae Harris, Aberbeeg and Pontypool.
Aberdare
Aberdare first gained a steam shed in 1846, and while the GWR added three stone buildings, it was a roundhouse dating from November 11, 1907 that was the main building. Post-nationalisation it was coded 88J and by 1950 it had 52 locos allocated to it; by 1959, 49 locos still remained. While it never enjoyed a diesel loco allocation, Class 14s and Cardiff Canton Class 37s were to be seen there from the early 1960s. In the mid-1960s the Class 37s were sharing the dreary, dank and dark environs of the shed with some of South Wales’ last steam locos, a situation that surely did little for their electrical systems and overall condition. The roundhouse was closed on March 1, 1965 and, for a while, Class 37s would stable outside the three large and imposing gable ends. When demolition came, diesel loco stabling was moved to Aberdare High Level station.
Class 14s were no longer stabling at Aberdare by the late 1960s, but it could still be counted upon to have a couple of Class 08s and four or five Class 37s over a weekend, making a visit for an elusive shunter a worthwhile trip. April 14, 1969 saw the introduction of stage two of the Cardiff Block Plan, which aimed to re-organise Cardiff Canton’s coal workings to make them more efficient. Aberdare subsequently required just one Class 08 and four Class 37s. While the small outpost clung on into the late 1970s, the Class 08 wasn’t an ever-present feature, and just three Class 37s were regularly to be found there.
The locos worked from Penderyn Quarry and Tower Colliery at the end of the branch, along with Penrhiwceiber and New Town Collieries. Penrhiwceiber closed on October 8, 1985, but even in 1987 Cardiff Canton still had a turn for a dual-braked Class 08 to work at Aberdare’s Abercwmboi Phurnacite Plant. It would be kept at Aberdare but by that time main line loco stabling had long since finished. Although the Plant was one of the main traffic sources, it was a place loved and loathed by locals and employees alike. While it was dangerous and a place of toil, there was a big social life outside of the plant and employees would convene for a pint at the nearby social club and pitch together to fund family get-togethers, kids’ parties and annual outings. Its closure in 1990 ended any requirement for locos and the brownfield site is now earmarked for 500 dwellings, 5.9 hectares of space for businesses, a new primary school and an area of informal recreation within the Cynon Valley River Park.
Rhymney
Thanks to retaining its passenger service, Rhymney was one of the easier sheds to visit. The Rhymney Railway opened the stonebuilt three-track dead-ended shed in 1864. Come nationalisation it had an allocation of 17 locos and a good dozen or more that could usually be found on shed over a weekend. With the introduction of diesel railcars Cardiff Cathays received an allocation of Class 116s in 1958. They were soon seen on the Valleys lines, with Rhymney noted as stabling: W50850/63/6/903//16/9/59365/71/ 4 on June 19, 1960.
It acted as a sub-shed of Merthyr 88D until itself becoming 88D in November 1964. At the time it had 19 ex-GWR Collett 0-6-2Ts as residents. By then the shed was falling into a state of disrepair. Nevertheless and despite never having receiving a diesel loco allocation, a few Class 37s, such as D6922, were noted on shed shortly before its closure at the end of March 1965.
With the closure of the former iron works south of Rhymney and the collieries further south served by other stabling points, Rhymney shed was demolished, with only a couple of sidings retained for DMUs. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s a couple of DMUs would reside around the station or on the former head shunt ready for a Monday morning. In the 1990s the line came back to prominence with the use of heritage diesels on loco-hauled services. The stabling roads at Rhymney were re-laid and realigned in 2007 to provide a runround loop opposite the station’s platforms along with four dead-end sidings for housing DMUs overnight.
Dowlais Cae Harris
One of the smaller and more difficult stabling points to visit was the remains of Dowlais Cae Harris shed, situated in the Brecon Hills east of Merthyr. Dowlais’ growth was attributed to the iron and steel works, which by the mid-1840s employed between 5,000 and 7,000 men, women and children. A three-track shed opened in 1876 but as a sub-shed of Merthyr it only ever enjoyed a small allocation of just half a dozen or so locos until it was closed to steam in December 1964. While no diesels were ever allocated to it, they were noted as residing amongst the ruins of the shed, which by 1966 consisted of only the roofless exterior walls. On leaving the steel works there was an extremely steep descent of 1:36 followed by a 1:43 climb to Cwm Bargoed and a 1:31 descent down the valley to Nelson. Loco stabling had ceased by 1973, when the Dowlais Foundry and Engineering Company became part of the nationalised British Steel Corporation (BSC).
Aberbeeg
As well as being the home of Josie, from the TV series Fresh Meat, Aberbeeg once also boasted a small diesel loco stabling point.
The Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company had opened a simple one-track shed at Aberbeeg in 1858. As the number of collieries along the line to Ebbw Vale increased, the GWR opened a much larger, twin-gabled four-track dead-end shed. It was situated further to the south, nearer to the village of Glandwr, and opened on April 7, 1919. It was coded 86H from 1949 and had an allocation of 37 engines in 1950 and 34 locos in 1959, shortly before being recoded as 86F in 1960.
DMUs took over passenger services in the late 1950s, although services between Newport High Street and Ebbw Vale Low Level were withdrawn on April 30, 1962. Nevertheless, the Aberbeeg Station Master, based in the old Aberbeeg station buildings, managed about 70 staff, including shunters, guards and signalmen. Aberbeeg Yard remained busy with traffic for the Ebbw Vale Steel Works at the end of the branch, along a brewery and collieries at Oakdale, Rose Heyworth, Six Bells, Celynen South and Marines.
A Class 08 was used at Ebbw Junction from at least May 1963, followed by another for Aberbeeg Yard. Pannier tanks were still used on some shunting turns and as bankers for the heavy coal and ore trains heading up the five-mile branch to Ebbw Vale Steel Works. However, with plenty of time between the banking turns, the Aberbeeg Shed Master cut one of the Class 08 turns and utilised the steam loco as required. Trains of tinplate consisting of up to 50 or so vanfits were worked out of Ebbw Vale and required extreme vigilance when being worked back down the 1:50 bank towards Aberbeeg.
While Class 37s had arrived by early 1964 and had pretty much taken over all workings by May 1964, Class 42s and 52s were seen on some services from Alexandra Docks to Ebbw Vale. As the pannier tanks were withdrawn towards the end of 1964, Class 14s were trialled on the banking duties. The heavy loads hopelessly overtaxed the locos, leading to them overheating and tripping out halfway up the bank. A Class 37 would then be sent up the branch to assist the ailing
Class 14 and train towards Ebbw Vale.
Two Churchward 2-8-0 tanks (5214 and 5128) were retained to cover the 0800 ‘anywhere’ diagram, which included trips to any of the six local collieries or cover for a Class 37 as required. From Aberbeeg Yard the loaded trains were taken to Rogerstone Yard, with empties being worked back from there or East Usk. For the steep gradients to Six Bells and Marine Collieries the rakes were broken down in Aberbeeg Yard into more manageable loads.
Aberbeeg’s Shed Master retired in the autumn of 1964, but with the shed set to close in the December, the Station Master acquired his duties through to closure. In an effort to improve the efficiency of workings, Aberbeeg men learned the road to Gloucester for the Mondays-only tinplate service from Ebbw Vale to Gloucester. Aberbeeg station was closed to goods on November 28, 1966 and the brewery traffic ceased around the same time, meaning only colliery traffic and the workings to and from Ebbw Junction remained.
After the closure of the shed, diesel locos still stabled in its yard for a few years until they moved to sidings No 1 and No 2 in Aberbeeg Yard where a couple of Class 08s and 37s were to be found with their accompanying brake vans. Three Ebbw
Junction Class 08s were required, one in Ebbw Junction sidings and two at BSC Ebbw Vale Steel Works. The loco stabling was at Aberbeeg from Saturday afternoon to late Sunday evening/early hours of Monday morning. The Class 37s worked the colliery traffic towards Newport, and services to Ebbw Junction and Machen Quarry.
The loss of traffic was exacerbated by the merging underground in the 1970s of Six Bells Colliery and Marine Colliery to form a ‘super pit’ requiring fewer men and fewer trains. The installation of underground conveyor belts for coal to washeries also reduced traffic.
Ebbw Vale Steel Works had been nationalised as part of British Steel from 1967 and at the time 14,500 people were employed in the works in and around the town. The Works’ original advantage was in being close to the source of its raw materials, but by the 1970s the industry was becoming dominated by ever larger works with access to huge volumes of coal and ore brought to bulk material handling transport facilities at deep water ports. With access to neither, Ebbw Vale was at a competitive disadvantage. Consequently, British Steel announced a plan to end iron and steel making at the Ebbw Vale Works and re-purpose the site as a specialist tinplate manufacturer.
The coke ovens were extinguished in March 1972 and, after some mammoth earth works,
efforts started in 1974 on extending the cold rolling mill with the commissioning of a newly built hydrochloric acid pickling line. The converter shop and all remaining blast furnaces were closed on July 17, 1975, having produced
16,916,523 tons of iron. And, having rolled 23m tons of steel since being commissioned in 1937, the hot strip mill produced its last hot
rolled coil on September 29, 1977. The final steel slab was produced in May 1978, bringing the total to 24m tons. Phase 2 of the tinplate works saw the demolition and clearance of the old plants and a new effluent plant, single stack annealing line, two electrolytic tinning lines, a cleaning line and a Hallden Shears plant were built at a cost of £57m. The works was officially opened in June 1978 by Derek
Hornby,President of the Food Manufacturing Federation. Government approval for Phase 3, which would have doubled production, was never given.
The end of iron and steel making at Ebbw Vale meant traffic was much reduced, leading to Aberbeeg ceasing to stable locos sometime shortly after 1977. The sidings were closed and because trainloads were by then working direct from collieries and power stations, several had been lifted by April 1980. The Aberdare branch was still fairly busy, though, with hundreds of thousands of tons of coal and regular services to Waunllwyd exchange sidings for Ebbw Vale.
By the late 1980s the coke works at Trethomas had closed. However, Oakdale had been substantially modernised between 1979 and 1985 and linked by underground roadways with Celynen North and Markham Collieries. The combined complex gave a total output of some 965,000 tons, which made it the highest producing mine in South Wales. Coal was forwarded to the major BSC steel plants of Scunthorpe, Llanwern and Margam. The latter two used elderly MDV wagons until August 1988 when a discharge
terminal was opened at Margam; one at Llanwern also came into use around the same time. The old wagons were retired and replaced with HAAs until the colliery closed in 1989.
In 1982 Marine Colliery received £2.5m of investment for a new skip winding system and a new coal handling plant. It then forwarded 370,000 tons per annum plus 280,000 tons of coal from the neighbouring Six Bells Colliery, which was also surfaced at Marine. Coal was sent to Uskmouth Power Station until it ceased receiving rail deliveries. In 1988 there were four planned services per day, many of them rakes of elderly vacuum-braked hoppers to Llanwern or Margam steelworks in Class 7 services. Marine closed in March 1989 – the last deep mine to work in the Ebbw valleys.
Machen Quarry usually sent a trainload of ballast out per day, possibly even a second if demands required one. A service to Allington in Kent was also run and this brought Class 56s to the line. It is the only freight traffic source to have remained open.
Ebbw Vale was receiving up to five trains of hot rolled steel coil per day from BSC plants at Ravenscraig, Llanwern or Margam. Coming out of Ebbw Vale were approximately 300,000 tons of tin plate per year, either by road or rail and mainly to the Metal Box company or European customers via the Dover train ferry or even further afield via ships from Newport Docks and Orb’s wharf. On October 6, 1999, a merger was announced between the Koninklijke Hoogovens steel company of the Netherlands, and British Steel plc to form new company, Corus. In July 2002 the Ebbw Vale steel works site closed, leaving a skeleton staff to deconstruct the remaining plant, that had been sold, along with handling until December 2002 the shipping of any finished product. The closure of Ebbw Vale meant the 18-mile line fell into disuse. However, the Welsh Assembly Government announced its commitment to re-opening the line to passengers, which finally happened using Class 150 DMUs in February 2008 after a gap of 46 years.
Pontypool Road
The shed at Pontypool Road originally dated from July 1, 1852 when the Monmouthshire Railway opened a two-track semi-roundhouse in Coed-y-Gric, only to close it in around 1865. Four years later an eight-track shed, probably dead ended, was opened, and beside it stood a roundhouse with the two sheds linked by a line passing through them.
An increasing number of collieries enclosed the shed, surrounding it with almost 50 sidings across eight separate yards named South Sidings, Northern Sidings, Old Yard, Middle Sidings, Birkenhead Sidings, Coal Stack, Coedy-Gric Sidings and New Sidings. The latter two were hump shunted from the south.
With an allocation of 87 locos in January 1948, Pontypool Road was one of the largest sheds in South Wales. It was coded PPRD prior to January 1950 when it became 86G. Throughout the 1950s more than 70 locos were regularly to be found on shed over a weekend. By early 1963 Class 08s were noted, with Ebbw Junction-allocated D41802/4 recorded on May 5, 1963 among the 65 locos present. Come mid-1964 and Brush Type 4s were also working off Pontypool, with D1735/43/8 seen alongside Class 08 D4179 out of a total of 56 engines.
The closure of the Vale of Neath line in 1964 robbed the yard of much of its traffic, meaning cuts and closure were all too inevitable. Only 22 locos were recorded at Pontypool shed on March 28, 1965. Amongst them were Class 08s D3821/4174, Class 14 D9518, Class 37s D6917/32 and Class 47s D1589/720/50. The facility closed to steam in May 1965 but still saw the odd Class 47 for a further two years.
Of the collieries in the area, Hafodyrynys had been linked underground to the new Glyntillery drift and Tirpentwys Colliery. The mine closed in 1966 but continued as a washery for coal from the Glyntillery drift. Tirpentwys ceased production in 1968 and from 1969 it was used to route coal from Blaenavon to Hafodyrynys. When Glyntillery ceased coal production in 1975, Blaenserchan coal was raised at Abertillery Colliery from 1977 until Blaenavon closed on February 2, 1980 with a loss of more than 250 jobs. All that remains today is the main line alongside the A4042 road.