Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway

v t e Burry Port & Gwendraeth Railway
Legend
After 1948
Cwmmawr Dynant Colliery Glynhabog Colliery Pontyberem Pentre Mawr Colliery Four Roads Ponthenry Colliery Mynydd-y-Garreg Ponthenry Minkie Road Caepontpren Colliery Pontyates GWR South Wales Railway to Carmarthen Glyn Abbey Halt (Pontnewydd) Kidwelly Carway Colliery Coadbach Washery Trimsaran Road Ty-coch Halt Trimsaran Goods Kidwelly Quay Kidwelly Junction Pinged Craiglon Bridge Halt Pembrey Burry Port Pembrey and Burry Port Cwm Capel Colliery Crown Colliery New Pwll Colliery Llanelly Docks Sandy Bridge Junction Llanelly & Mynydd Mawr Rly to Cross Hands GWR South Wales Railway to Swansea

The Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway (BP&GVR) was a mineral railway company that constructed a railway line in Carmarthenshire, Wales, by conversion of a canal, to connect collieries and limestone pits to the sea at Kidwelly. It extended its network to include Burry Port, Trimsaran and a brickworks at Pwll, later extending to Sandy near Llanelli. For a time the company worked the separate Gwendraeth Valleys Railway. The BP&GVR was notable because of the very low height of some overbridges, a legacy of the canal conversion.

It was completely dependent on the economy of the mineral industries it served and due to depression in them, it was for many years in administration. In the final years of the nineteenth century those industries developed considerably and the fortunes of the BP&GVR improved as well, paying 10% dividends for several years, before absorption by the Great Western Railway in 1922.

For some time the line carried miners to their place of work, and their families to market, and from 1913 the company carried the general public in passenger trains.

After 1945 mineral extraction in the area declined steeply; passenger operation ceased in 1953, and in the 1960s most of the network closed progressively as pits closed. The final short section at Kidwelly closed in 1998.