Cardiff Central (Welsh: Caerdydd Canolog) is a major station on the South Wales Main Line.

It was Isambard Kingdom Brunel's solution to divert the River Taff to the west, creating a larger and safer site for the station.

In 1903, another shortcut, the Badminton railway line was opened, bypassing Bath and Bristol, and this reduced the Cardiff-London journey times by another hour.

[9][10] Between 1931 and 1934, the station underwent a major rebuild, designed by the GWR's architects department under their chief architect Percy Emerson Culverhouse, the centrepiece of this was a new Art Deco entrance building faced in Portland stone, containing a booking hall and concourse with noted Art Deco light fittings, all topped by a clock cupola.

[11] The current Art Deco lamps in the booking hall are replicas of the originals, installed in 1999, having been funded by the Railway Heritage Trust.

The rebuild also saw a number of other improvements including the lengthening of the platforms, the widening of the Taff River railway bridge to allow the approach lines to the station to be quadrupled, and the installation of colour-light signalling.

The rebuild of the station cost the GWR £820,000 (equivalent to £73,530,000 in 2023),[13], and was formally opened by the Minister of Transport Oliver Stanley on 26 February 1934.

[8] In July 1934, the GWR began a pioneering diesel railcar service with a buffet between Cardiff General and Birmingham Snow Hill which had only two stops at Newport and Gloucester.

This was the first long distance diesel express service in Britain, covering the 117.5 miles (189.1 km) between Cardiff and Birmingham in 2 hours 20 minutes.

It proved so successful that larger railcars with more seating and no buffet had to be introduced to cope with demand, and even this had to be augmented by a normal locomotive hauled service.

[14][15][16][17] As a result of representations by the GWR, a nearby working-class district, Temperance Town, was cleared during the late 1930s in order to improve the outlook of the rebuilt station.

The Riverside platforms were closed for passenger use on 16 March 1964, but they continued to be used for parcels and newspaper traffic for a number of years after.

[26] The old Grade II listed Water Tower (next to Platform 0 and the River Taff) was repainted in 2012 in the original brown and beige colours of the Great Western Railway.

[27] The new entrance on the south side of the station, was opened in September 2015,[28] and the new platform 8 on the south side of the station, opened in January 2017, allowing the number of trains on the busy Cardiff Central to Cardiff Queen Street corridor to be increased from 12 to 16 per hour.

[29][30] A major redevelopment scheme began in 2015 of Central Square in front of the main station entrance, of which Network Rail owned part.

500,000 square feet of new office space were planned for the area formerly occupied by Cardiff Central bus station.

Platforms 0 to 4 are typically used by longer distance regional and national services operated by Transport for Wales Rail, Great Western Railway, and CrossCountry to destinations including London Paddington, Birmingham New Street, Bristol Temple Meads, Carmarthen, Derby, Nottingham, Gloucester, Manchester Piccadilly, Milford Haven, Taunton, Portsmouth Harbour, Swansea, Holyhead and Chester.

To the West of the station lies Canton TMD, operated by Transport for Wales Rail, as well as the junction splitting trains to Penarth and the Vale of Glamorgan, Swansea, and Valley line services via Ninian Park and Radyr.

The work was funded by Transport for Wales, who also aimed to refurbish toilets, install more ticket machines, phone charging points, and build cycle storage in 2020.

[45] Three train operators run services to Cardiff Central, a summary is as follows: On 4 May 1998, eleven wagons of a freight train which was carrying iron ore from Port Talbot derailed just east of the station, causing substantial damage to the track, as well as blocking the main line into the station.

Rail services were severely disrupted in August 2012 when the retaining wall between the tracks partially collapsed, spilling five tonnes of earth.

During the Cardiff Area Resignalling Scheme, a set of points had been left in an unsafe condition, and undetectable by the signalling system.