Kidwelly and Burry Port Railway

The Kidwelly and Burry Port Railway was the railway company created in 1865 when the Kidwelly and Llanelly Canal and Tramroad Company, threatened by the Llanelly Railway and Dock Company and the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway, obtained an act of Parliament to convert its obsolescent canal system into a railway. The Kidwelly and Burry Port Railway Act 1865 received royal assent on 5 July 1865. It authorised eighteen and a half miles of new line, from Burry Port to a junction with the Llanelly Railway and Dock Company at Llanarthney and a second main line to Cross Hands Colliery, on a capital of 120,000 pounds, of which 72,400 pounds was the price of the canal system, a plain over-valuation of out-dated technology. The company shared many directors with the Burry Port Harbour Company, and by an act of 30 April 1866 the two were combined and the undertaking was renamed the Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway.