Pontypool, Caerleon and Newport Railway

The Llantarnam Link, connecting the upper Eastern Valley network, was opened in 1878 and from that time most local traffic transferred to the line.

The main line was increasingly used for long-distance passenger and goods traffic, especially from Bristol and the West of England after the opening of the Severn Tunnel.

In this period Parliament was concerned to restrict what it saw as unnecessary parallel routes, and in authorising the NA&HR line in 1846, it refused it permission to build south of Pontypool.

It also had to use the MR&CR passenger station there, although mineral traffic to the docks was considerably dominant, and a northward flow, of coal to the River Mersey for bunkering ships, developed strongly.

This east–west route intersected numerous valleys and as their own railway systems developed, many mineral sites used the Taff Vale Extension to pass their production towards London and the north-west of England.

[note 3] Newport GWR station itself was extremely congested at the time, and the transit over the Eastern Valley Line was in itself difficult.

[5] The Pontypool, Caerleon and Newport Railway (PC&NR)[note 4] was promoted in the 1865 session of Parliament to build a new route to avoid the lower part of the Eastern Valley Line: it was an independent company.

The eastern arm of the triangle to the future Maindee East Junction led nowhere, as there were no siding or other facilities to handle arriving narrow gauge trains.

[6] The proposal was speculative; the junctions with the broad gauge GWR would still require transshipping of goods and minerals for onward transit, and the eastward spur at Maindee did not lead to sidings where that might be done.

At the same time the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company was extremely hostile, as the new line would abstract much of their Eastern Valley business.

The alignment of the PC&NR to the GWR increased the hostility of the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company to the project, and this may explain the omission of the proposed connection near Caerleon.

The Taff Vale Extension Line was steeply graded and not without difficulty in operation, whereas the Sirhowy route would have easier gradients for the loaded mineral trains from Aberdare and elsewhere.

At first the Monmouthshire opposed the GWR plans in the House of Commons, but the bill passed nonetheless, becoming the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway (Taff Vale Extension) Act 1853 (16 & 17 Vict.

[2] The availability of the Maindee East Loop coupled with the opening of the Severn Tunnel in 1886 vastly simplified the transfer of coal traffic to London and also to Portland and Southampton, where bunkering Royal Navy and ocean-going commercial shipping was experiencing considerable growth.

This enabled trains to reach the River Mersey (at Birkenhead) over track controlled solely or jointly by the GWR, whereas routing via Gloucester and Birmingham was dependent on the co-operation of competing companies.