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Rhymney Railway
The Rhymney Railway was virtually a single stretch of main line, some fifty miles in length, by which the Rhymney Valley was connected to the docks at Cardiff in the county of Glamorgan, South Wales.
History
The aim of the railway was to gain access to the large iron works and collieries at the extreme north of the Valley. Short extensions, connecting with other railways, gave the Rhymney routes to take its (largely mineral) traffic to the Midlands and the North of England, or opened up connections to collieries and iron works. Some of those routes were worked jointly with other companies, particularly the London and North Western Railway (LNWR).
Growth of the railway
The original incorporation was in 1854, and the railway was opened in various sections as follows:
Rhymney
Coordinates: 51°45′32″N 3°16′59″W / 51.759°N 3.283°W
Rhymney (/ˈrʌmni/; Welsh: Rhymni [ˈr̥əmnɪ]) is a town and a community located in the county borough of Caerphilly in south-east Wales, within the historic boundaries of Monmouthshire. Along with the villages of Pontlottyn, Fochriw, Abertysswg, Deri and New Tredegar, Rhymney is designated as the 'Upper Rhymney Valley' by the local Unitary Authority, Caerphilly County Borough Council. As a community, Rhymney includes the town of Rhymney, Pontlottyn, Abertysswg, Butetown and Twyncarno. Rhymney is known to many outside Wales as a result of the song "The Bells of Rhymney", a musical adaptation of a poem by Idris Davies.
History
The countryside around present day Rhymney would have been very different in the early 17th century. A new parish of Bedwellty had been formed in 1624, covering the lower division of the Wentloog Hundred, in the county of Monmouth, a hilly district between the river Rumney, on the West, and the Sirhowey on the East. The upper Sirhowy Valley at this time would have been a natural well wooded valley, consisting of a few farms and the occasional small iron works where iron ore and coal naturally had occurred together. Later it would have contained the chapelries of Rhymney and Tredegar, the latter being known as a market town. It wasn’t until the 1750s that industrialisation began with the establishment of the Sirhowy Iron Works. It was from this pastoral pre-industrial period that the Buccaneer Henry Morgan was born around 1635 -the eldest son of Robert Morgan, a farmer living in Llanrhymny, today known as Rhymney three miles from Tredegar. In Welsh the original meaning of Llan is ‘an enclosed piece of land’.
