Carmarthen’s next train to Aberystwyth will depart in … thirty years
1962 image of Bryn Teifi station in Wales geograph.org.uk - Ben Brooksbank - WikiCommons image
Transport campaigners are calling on the Welsh Government to take action to reinstate the railway line that directly links Carmarthen to Aberystwyth, which originally closed in February 1965. Traws Link Cymru, which was set up in 2013 to campaign for the line to be reopened, published a report in 2020 that considered factors it said should feed into any assessment of the economic viability of the line. These included population and passenger numbers, demand for public transport, and the issue of rural transport poverty.
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Sounds like the man has never taken the carmarthen to aber bus! Almost 3 hours and do that on a hot or cold day and it’s hell. No bathroom, constant winding roads and people literally doing drugs in the back seats.
Hmmmmm, so a person who is heavily invested in buses poopoos reopening a railway link that will rival his bus routes. Tell me why his views are relevant? This smacks of that beeching, marples and hancock debacle a few decades back.
It would be nice to have the rail link back. I enjoyed a day trip on the central Wales line ten years ago.
The estimated cost was £775m in 2017 so double that now. The line has been built over at either ends with the Carmarthen bypass at one end and housing and roads at Aberystwyth. Possible solutions involve a new tunnel at the Aber’ end – it’s all fantasy land! How to pass over the Cors-Caron peat bog SSI in an environmentally acceptable manner are unsolved. Finally The line was actually closed due to flooding deemed uneconomic to repair even in 1960’s before the Beeching cuts formalised it.
Clearly it is important, particularly in light of the Welsh Govts moratorium on road building, to invest in rail infrastructure in Wales. Anyone unfortunate enough to have to take a train anywhere in Wales knows the importance of having north south rail connections that don’t go via England. The end points may have been developed, but that doesn’t stop the line being rerouted east of Aber, to connect to the existing line. A Cardiff/Swansea to Aber service would increase capacity enormously.
Well the small matter of the Cambrian mountain range which starts to rise as you go east from Aberystwyth might make that idea of “simply” rerouting the line rather difficult.
That’s why the early attempts to create a rail route into Aber’in the 1800’s direct from the east were abandoned.