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The Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway (B&M) was a railway in Wales running from Brecon, Brecknockshire to east of Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan. It was one of several railways that served the industrial areas of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire along with the Taff Vale Railway (TVR) and Great Western Railway (GWR). The line opened in stages in the 1860s, including the Beacon Tunnel at Torpantau (Official Railway name Torpantau tunnel), 1313 feet above mean sea level, the highest railway tunnel in Britain, and a 7-mile north to south approach to the tunnel on a 1:38 rising gradient. Though it survived through to nationalisation in 1948, it was never profitable and consequently passenger services were withdrawn in 1962 with a complete closure to freight services to Brecon in 1964. A section of the line is now occupied by the Brecon Mountain Railway. ==History== In 1836, Sir John Josiah Guest, of the Dowlais iron Works, had written of his proposal to construct a railway linking Dowlais to the valley of the River Usk, and possibly also running into Brecon. The line would have pretty nearly covered the same route as was eventually adopted by the B&M. A similar proposal suggested a line running up the Taf Fawr valley over the Brecon Beacons via Storey Arms and thence to Brecon. The company was established by a Bill of 1859, financially supported by several prominent Brecon citizens, and the complete route from Brecon to Merthyr Tydfil was authorised the following year. The first section to open was a section between Brecon and Talybont-on-Usk in 1863, which reused a section of a horse-drawn tram line. The Beacons tunnel (also known as Torpantau tunnel) opened in 1868. The complicated series of amalgamations (including its originator the ''Hay Railway'',a tram-road worked by horses opened in 1816) can best be appreciated (here ) to explain how the B&M came about. In fact the B&M used the ''Hay Railway'' as the basis for its route between Talyllyn and Brecon. This included the tramroad tunnel (see below) at Talyllyn which required widening and deepening to allow the passage of standard gauge trains. The system eventually came to comprise two sections of lines: *The Southern section, effectively the consumed Rumney Railway, which linked Bassaleg (where there were connections with the GWR and the London and North Western Railway) and the ironworks town of Rhymney, near the head of the Rhymney Valley. The RR/TVR ran up the same valley in parallel with the B&M, and the wholly separate Rhymney Railway *The Northern section linked Deri junction by means of running powers over a section of the Rhymney Railway in the Bargoed Rhymney Valley to Pant, Pontsticill and Brecon via a tunnel through the Brecon Beacons. From the tunnel the line descended towards Talybont on a continuous 1-in-38 gradient known as the "Seven-Mile Bank". For southbound trains this presented the steepest continuous ascent on the British railway network. Initially, the only connection to Merthyr Tydfil was by means of a horse-drawn bus from Pant, but, by 1868, a connection with Merthyr had been established by sharing lines with Vale of Neath, London and North Western and Taff Vale railways. This involved the building of nearly seven miles of line from Pontsticill to Merthyr, with an almost continuous descent of 1 in 45-50, two complete reversals of direction and the construction of two viaducts to carry the line over the Taf Fechan at Pontsarn, and the Taf Fawr at Cefn Coed. The Pontsarn viaduct is long and height, whilst the Cefn Coed (or Pontycapel) viaduct is long with a height of . The section to the north of Pant was primarily a passenger service, serving isolated farms and villages. South of Pant, it was mainly a mineral line and carried coal from the mines down to the Newport Docks. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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