A History of the Port Talbot Railway & Docks Company and the South Wales Mineral Railway Vol 1: 1853-1907

Robin G. Simmonds  Lightmoor Press 2012  £25

The origins of the Port Talbot Railway & Docks Company can be found in the formation of the Port Talbot Company in 1836 and the construction and development of the first Port Talbot dock by C.R.M. Talbot. Following his death his daughter promoted the PTR&D Co. in order to improve the dock and realise the industrial potential of her newly inherited Margam Estate. In this first volume Robin Simmonds describes these developments and continues the story of the railway side of the undertaking up to 1908 when the GWR took over the running of the railway. A short distance along the coast the South Wales Mineral Railway, opened throughout in 1863, connected the collieries at Glyncorrwg to a new dock at Briton Ferry. It was never a financial success, but was a useful source of traffic and from 1907 was worked by the PTR. The volume closes with an account of the locomotives and rolling stock acquired by these lines up to the GWR takeover in 1908. Includes numerous photographs of the PTR's construction, and of the collieries and industries served by the railway.