Ely and Clydach Valleys Railway

The Ely and Clydach Valleys Railway was a short mineral line in the South Wales coalfield, promoted in 1872 to run from a junction near Dinas on the Ely Valley Railway to the head of Cwm Clydach, a distance of nearly two miles. It was only nominally independent: the Ely Valley Railway, already leased to the Great Western Railway, backed it because the Taff Vale Railway branch serving the Cwm Clydach pits ran up a 1 in 13 rope-worked incline that was congesting as traffic grew, and a new pit sunk at Clydach Vale in 1872 threatened to overwhelm it. The company obtained its authorising Act of Parliament on 5 August 1873 and opened, at least in part, on 10 August 1878, though the expected coal traffic was slow to arrive because the coalmaster had agreed to send its output exclusively over the Taff Vale Railway. The company was vested in the Great Western Railway from 27 August 1880.