WRRC Forum

R W Kidner, in his revision of the Barrie book 'The Rhymney Railway' (pp17-18) states -

"... the RR-LNWR Agreement of 1864 gave the latter running powers over the TVR to Walnut Tree Junction. This, described as 'an insolent clause' was ineffective, but the LNWR did obtain running powers for trains to Penarth Dock".

Does anyone know if this power was ever exercised, and if so, when and how?

Hi Tim,

Thanks for posting this, which turns out to be a very interesting question to try and answer. Sorry this is a bit of a long post, but hopefully has sufficient detail to be clear and understandable.

The conclusion is however that it seems to me unlikely that either the RR or the LNWR ever had running rights over the TVR to access Penarth Dock. I provide the reasons for this conclusion below.

Given this, I am more inclined to say that the quoted exert from the book isn’t correct regarding LNWR running rights to Penarth Dock (at least as might possibly be derived from the 1864 RR Act) – although presumably R. W. Kidner came to this view for good reason.

Hope the explanation is of interest, and at least partly answers your question. Although the answer appears to be there was no power for LNWR to exercise over the TVR lines to Penarth Dock (at least under the 1864 RR Act), and their trains therefore never reached Penarth Dock.

Thanks in advance for reading.

Regards,

Joe RLVW

Background
I didn’t know the answer, but the extract you quote is quite intriguing. I did a bit of investigating from different sources including information published in books, the WRRC website content (sections on the RR and the TVR). I also looked at National Library of Scotland’s historical map layers as well as the original relevant Acts of Parliament, as primary sources. I summarise the main conclusion below in case it’s useful.

RR Running Rights
The first point is that the portion of the TVR concerned, over which the RR had running rights, was defined as the part of the TVR between the RR-TVR junction at Walnut Tree Junction (Taffs Well area) and the Junction between the TVR in Cardiff at a connection to the Bute East Dock Railway (to be built by the RR). The Dock Railway was to be built from a connection to the TVR in Cardiff near where the TVR line crossed the end of Queen St and Newport Road. It then went south in some curved arcs, to the East Bute Dock (yet to be built). So RR did not have any rights by 1864 to run trains to Penarth Dock as far as I can tell. Hence on this basis alone the LNWR would not have been able to run trains to Penarth Dock unless another agreement with the TVR was made other than that referred to by R.W. Kidner.

I attach a link below to the National Library of Scotland map of the area for clarity of the intended Cardiff connection between the TVR and the RR when the agreement was made. I include a ‘split’ view showing the 1888-1915 layer on the left, and the modern city on the right for ease of orientation.

Link: Side by side georeferenced maps viewer - Map images - National Library of Scotland (https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by ... =ESRIWorld)

The RR Station, just to the north of the TVR Station (now Queen Street Station), represents the approximate original exit/ entry point between the RR and the TVR in Cardiff associated with RR running rights over the TVR. The RR to the north of the stations i.e. the eastern pair of the 4 mainlines north of the station; (the western pair of lines heading north is the TVR); is the line completed in 1871 that connects the RR in Cardiff to Caerphilly under the mountain / Cefn Onn ridge north of Lisvane. (The Caerphilly tunnel took from 1866 to 1871 to build.)

The RR connection to the Bute docks can be seen to run to the South East direction from the RR Station, before crossing the GWR mainline from Newport, and then looping back westwards to access the Bute Docks via the Bute Viaduct. (i.e. the Bute East Dock Railway mentioned above.)

[Please note that some of this information leading to this conclusion about running rights is not directly in the 1864 RR Act or the RR-LNWR Agreement contained as a part of the schedule therein. Instead reference to the earlier 1857, and 1855 RR Acts needs to be made to get the full picture of the lines and the RR running rights over the TVR. ]

Access to Penarth Dock
The second issue is around the TVR route to Penarth Dock, with the Dock being not complete at the time the 1864 RR Act was passed.

The TVR took out a long lease on Penarth Dock in 1862 which was subject to a legal objection by the Marquis of Bute (TVR won its case). Presumably the Marquis (or his Trustees) wasn’t (weren’t) happy that he / his Estate was losing the monopoly on the Cardiff coal trade via shipments in the Cardiff Docks / Bay area. In any event the Penarth Dock was completed and TVR built a new line to serve the Dock. This was build from a new TVR Junction near Radyr and down the western side of Cardiff direct to the Dock. Later there were other lines to the west of Cardiff that relied on a portion of the TVR to reach Penarth Dock itself.

The WRRC site includes information / notes on the RR and TVR which include some useful maps illustrating the available connectivity. See Links below:

RR: Welsh Railways Research Circle Rhymney Railway (https://wrrc.org.uk/rhymneyrc.php)
Note: Crockherbtown (Street) was renamed Queen Street during the reign of Queen Victoria.

TVR: Welsh Railways Research Circle (https://wrrc.org.uk/taffrc.php)

It is worth noting in particular the following points in the TVR timeline from the above WRRC link:

“1862 Penarth Harbour Dock and Railway leased to TVR for 999 years
1865 Penarth Dock opened
1866 Radyr storage sidings and shed developed
1873 Rhymney Railway delivers 229,650 Tons of coal to Radyr in year
1878 Penarth Town to Cardiff service started”

The above extracts tend to support the view that the RR did not have a direct route (or a route with any capacity on it), that could serve Penarth Dock. Instead the TVR built exchange sidings near the new Radyr Junction that connected to the TVR line to Penarth Dock. The above WRRC time line suggests that coal collected by the RR was most likely shipped from Penarth Dock, albeit the trains must have been exchanged to the TVR at Radyr sidings.

Legal Issue of Transfer of RR Running Rights to LNWR
In any event it is not clear that the LNWR had any running rights over the TVR from the RR–TVR agreement. In particular since LNWR was a different legal entity it isn’t clear (at least to me) that the RR could legally assign its rights under its agreement with the TVR to the LNWR at all. This legality issue appears to be recognised in the 1864 RR Act Schedule which details the RR-LNWR agreement.

In particular the RR-LNWR agreement includes a proviso that the LNWR has, ‘The right to use (so far as the Rhymney Company can lawfully grant the same) the Taff Vale Railway from the Point of Junction at Walnut Tree Bridge to Cardiff, subject to the “Rhymney Railway Act, 1857:” ’. (My underline for emphasis). i.e. the Act is ambiguous on whether or not the RR can assign its running rights on the TVR to LNWR.

Perhaps this is the “insulting” clause referenced by R.W. Kidner?

Hi Joe,
Thank you for this very well argued reply. I could find no references in any LNWR documents to access to Penarth, so the possibility was intriguing.

I think that your suggestion that any RR traffic was handed over at Radyr, when the Penarth line opened, is the most likely solution. LNWR timetables show that they did not carry local traffic while passing over the RR and that intermediate stops were only to exchange traffic with the Barry and Alexandra Docks companies. I also agree with you that the assigning of access rights when they were not available to be assigned could easily be described by 19th Century lawyers as 'insolent'!

As an aside, I think that this exchange of information and thoughts is just what the Forum should be used for, and it is a pity that it is not more widely used.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your very positive reply – I’m glad you found my post useful. I haven’t been using the forum for long but I agree that it’s a shame there aren’t more people active on it - as its always interesting to see what other research and issues come up. Thanks also for confirming that the research you have done with timetables tends to support the view the LNWR did not reach Penarth.

It’s always pleasing when completely separate and different approaches come to the same conclusion.

On the point you make about there not being any “Local” traffic carried by the LNWR, based on your timetable research, that makes perfect sense to me. I note in support of this the following extract from the RR-LNWR Agreement per the Schedule in the 1864 RR Act states as follows.

“… nor shall such Right of User be exercised by the North-western Company for the Purpose of conveying what is usually termed local Traffic, that is, Traffic arising at any place on the Rhymney Railway, and destined for some other place thereon…”

[Apologies I didn’t include this in my original post as it wasn’t directly relevant to the argument developed, but perhaps it would have been an interesting addition.]

The carrying of local traffic by the LNWR was therefore expressly prohibited under the agreement.

The arrangement between the 2 companies does however seem much closer than the RR-TVR relationship. In particular the LNWR could run trains over the entire RR network existing in 1864 as well as future lines.

[The agreement includes a 99year lease covering the lines existing in 1864 and any future lines (e.g. the Caerphilly line to Cardiff from 1871 onwards) but it does not allow any local traffic. This makes good business sense in that it helps maximise use of the RR, and the RR would have received revenues (tolls) etc for the traffic carried by the LNWR and facilities used. Equally the LNWR would have carried more passengers on its long distance services.]

On a related but slightly different note I have a copy of “LNWR Carriages A Concise History” by David Jenkinson (1995 edition). It includes a diagram of carriage workings in “Appendix IV – Aspects of LNWR Carriage Working c.1910-12”. As luck would have it, this is for a train at 16:10 from Cardiff via Merthyr to Hereford, where it became the 20:00 service via Shrewsbury to Crewe.

The notes for the diagram indicate that the Cardiff to Merthyr train ran on the RR and was a Rhymney Railway train. The train continued as an LNWR train for the rest of the journey to Crewe with various formation changes along the way.

[The RR had running powers over the GWR from Hengoed (which was connected to the RR) to Merthyr according to the map on the WRRC RR page (link in previous post)].

The RR train that started in Cardiff had 4 carriages - 3 non-LNWR local vehicles (I assume all RR stock although this isn’t explicitly stated); and 1 non-LNWR through vehicle (a RR brake van which ran all the way to Crewe). The train continued as the 17:10 from Merthyr - an LNWR train to Hereford (with the addition of 1 LNWR sorting van that ended up in Euston). At Hereford the 3 non-LNWR vehicles were detached and the RR brake van that started in Cardiff continued all the way to Crewe. Presumably the 3 other local vehicles (assumed RR stock) from Cardiff returned back to Cardiff from Hereford as part of a reverse direction service – i.e. LNWR Hereford to Merthyr train and then RR service from Merthyr to Cardiff.