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The Penydarren Tramroad


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The Railway Magazine, March 1951, carried a short note about the Penydarren Tramway as well as an article about Richard Trevithick and his locomotive which first ran on the Tramway in February 1804. The first steam locomotive on rails .....

This post pulls together information from a number of different websites about the Penydarren Tramway. The next post will follow the length of the line as best as is possible ....

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2019/02/02/the-penydarren-tramroad-south-wales-part-1

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There is useful information on both the line and the locomotives in "Merthyr Tydfil Tramroads and their locomotives" by Gordon Rattenbury and M J T Lewis - RCHS, 2004. I bought my copy at the WRRC AGM this year for £2 when surplus stocks of various RCHS publications where being sold off.

Among other things it makes the point that the well known drawing cannot be the Penydarren locomotive.

And that photo has appeared in several places, including both the above book and the WRRC's Welsh Railways Archive magazine.

That said, your two posts include a lot of extra information and very useful photos and maps which I have not seen elsewhere.

Many thanks.

Jonathan

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Attention naturally focusses on the 1805 locomotive, a sort of steam powered mobile trombone apparently, but this loco did not last long in service and was adapted for use as a mobile boiler for use at the northern end of the tramroad.  The subsequent history of the Pennydarren's locomotives is somewhat obscured by events in Leeds and the North East, but is nonetheless interesting; the tramroad went back to using steam traction around 1829, and features what look very much to me like the first ever rack and pinion locos and the first articulated loco as well.  It may have featured the first folding chimneys on locomotives as well.

 

The pre-coal mining era of the Industrial Revolution in South Wales spawned a large network of tramroads or dramroads which covered the Merthyr and Dowlais areas as well as the Monmouthshire Valleys, the 'Top', and connections to the Brecon & Monmouthshire Canal at Talybont on Usk (the Bryn Ore Tramroad), Llangattock, and Llafoist near Abergavenny.  The Tredegar Tramroad ran for 18 miles from the ironworks of that town to Newport, forming the basis of the later LNWR Risca-Tredegar branch, and the horses were changed half way at Nine Mile Point, which still carries the name.  

 

This was not in any way an integrated network, as gauge, wheel profiles, flange or plateway track, and materials for rails were not standardised.  Some drams had wheels fitted loose on the axles to cope with different gauges, some wheels were internally and some externally flanged, and some double flanged.  Much of it in the Monmouthshire Valleys later consolidated under the auspices of the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company, which introduced steam traction to it at around the same time as the Penydarren began using steam again, but standardisation was never achieved and the tramroads were either ultimately abandoned or converted to standard gauge 'normal' railways.  

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