The Whitland & Cardigan Railway. ......

[rogerfarnworth]

The Whitland & Cardigan Railway was a 27.5 miles (44.3 km) long branch line, "built in two stages, at first as the Whitland and Taf Vale Railway from the South Wales Main Line at Whitland to the quarries at Glogue. It opened in 1873, at first only for goods and minerals and later for passengers. The line to Cardigan opened in 1886; reflected in the company name change.

This is a first article about the line and follows the first length of the line out from Cardigan.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/07/15/ra ... o-boncath/

[rogerfarnworth]

This is the second in a short series of articles about the line.

My interest in this branch line stems from reading an article by M.R. Connop Price; Before the Railways: The Early Steamers of Cardiganshire; in the Railway & Canal Historical Society Journal in July 2022. And from staying North of Cardigan in 2023 and walking part of the route of the old line.

We restart our journey from Cardigan to Whitland at Boncath Railway Station.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/07/25/ra ... anglydwen/

[rogerfarnworth]

The last length of the Whitland & Cardigan Railway is covered in the linked article below. Before completing the journey to Whitland, the article also looks at Locomotives and Rolling Stock used on the line.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/08/30/ra ... -whitland/

[Mountain Goat]

It runs through some of the nicest scenery there is!

Whitland station... The old Cardi-Bach bay platform was on the north side of the station to the right of the photographs. The main line goes through the middle. The sidings to the left (On the south side of the station) and the bay platform on the left (Still in use for rare situations as have worked the odd train from the bay myself) was the Pembroke and Tenby bay platform. Whitland once had four platforms. (Now has three but only two are in regular use. The bay is normally used to hold works trains OR for unusual workings when something has gone wrong and had a serious delay, so they shunt a train which when I worked could be a 142, 143, 150, 153, 158 or a 175, so that passengers could get off the Milford (Or Fishguard) trains and get on the Pembroke Dock train in the bay (A very quick and easy change). Whitland Up and Down platforms on the main line allow for permissive working, so on certain weekend summer services we used to uncouple so a four car would become two two car units, with half going to Milford Haven, and the other half going down to Pembroke Dock, and when both trains returned, the one from Pembroke Dock would wait on the branch so the one coming on the main line would go into the Whitland up platform first, and then the one from the Pembroke branch would come in and couple up behind if that makes sense?
The old Cardigan platform (Not been track there for years!) also had within the area a turntable, though not on the platform area itself, as we used to have a regular passenger in his 90's who used to be a signal man there, and who had worked his way up to be incharge of the area and had his gold pocket watch for free railway travel (The ONLY one I had ever come across during my time on the railway). He told me that when he started out in the job at Whitland, a driver ignored the signals and drove straight onto the turntable, so he natrually went to him to complain! He had a mouthful back from the driver saying "You should have had the signals ready for me so I could drive straight on!"

But yes. One unusual trade on the line is where they used to take a huge amount of rabbits to London each day. Think a goods van and a half worth, all wild rabbits caught by local farmers and other locals living there. When mixermatosis was introduced in the 1950's (Before the line was shut) the trade ended.




But anyway!

[rogerfarnworth]

Thank you Mountain Goat.

[Mountain Goat]

Just added a little more to what I wrote.

Another aspect of the line. Some of the stations track layout seemed impossible to get a loco in to do a shunt, but in these areas, all shunting was done by rope on a parallel line, and also used capstans if the direction of the shunt needed to be reversed. In theory these captstans could still be there.