View the photos from A Walk Along The Cardiff Railway as part of my Merthyr Road collection on Flickr.
In 1885, the Marquis of Bute finally succeeded in assuming ownership of the Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canals. It was his intention to close both canals and re-use the land for a railway to compete with the Taff Vale Railway. However, he was unable to do so, and instead was forced to build his Cardiff Railway as a new route north to Treforest. The route ran from Heath Junction, through Coryton, across the Glamorganshire Canal at Middle Lock, and north from there through Taffs Well, Nantgarw, the modern-day Treforest Industrial Estate, and behind the Treforest Tin Plate Works at Rhydyfelin.
However, even the powerful Marquis had finally met his match. The Taff Vale Railway purchased strategically-placed land just south of Treforest, and so were able to prevent the Cardiff Railway from being connected to Treforest Junction. The Marquis was forced to consider merger talks, but when these broke down in 1909, it sealed Cardiff Railway’s fate. With no connection at Treforest, Cardiff Railway was a railway that went nowhere. Passenger services up to Rhydyfelin Halt began in 1911, but in 1931 they were cut back to go no further than Coryton.
The colliery opened at Nantgarw in the 1938 finally gave the railway the freight it was built to carry. However, with the war over, the Taff Vale Railway was able to divert even this traffic by laying a branch line to the colliery in 1952, and in 1953 the line north of Coryton finally closed for good.
Thoughts On The Day
I have something to confess. As a regular commuter between the valleys and Cardiff, I often wondered why the Coryton line didn’t connect up to the main route at Radyr Station. I often expressed the opinion that this would be A Good Thing(tm).
Now, thankfully, I know better.
The basis of this ignorance was the mistaken belief that the Coryton line must once have been connected to the main route at Radyr Station. I’d never heard of Cardiff Railway, and I had no idea at all that the Coryton line was the remainder of a railway that had made its own independent route up to Trefforest. I’d never heard of the Glamorganshire Canal, or the Local Nature Reserve at Forest Farm, and didn’t know that the Coryton line would have to take a destructive route through the Local Nature Reserve in order to reach Radyr.
Time has moved on and consigned the Cardiff Railway route to the history books. North of the M4, very little of the route survives at all. It was the last railway to be built in direct competition with the Taff Vale Railway. It had to jump through the most hoops in order to snake its way north, the most favourable land having already been taken up by the Glamorganshire Canal and the Taff Vale Railway.
In retrospect, the futility of the Cardiff Railway is best summed up by the viaduct over the Taff built immediately behind the Treforest Tin Works. Built in 1907, only a single token train ever crossed Rhydyfelin Viaduct, because north of the Tin Works the Taff Vale Railway did everything they could to prevent the Cardiff Railway ever connecting to it (a temporary connection was put in place in 1909, which allowed the single train to cross Rhydyfelin Viaduct, but this connection at Treforest Junction was removed in the same year after a merger between Taff Vale Railway and Cardiff Railway collapsed). Unused for 31 years, Rhydyfelin Viaduct was taken down in 1940 to be recycled for the war effort.
What’s left today is a pleasant walk, taking about half an hour, between Coryton Station and Longwood Drive. We parked on Longwood Drive itself, and made our way down the steps beside a surviving bridge to the cutting where the Cardiff Railway once ran. From there, we made our way south to Coryton, before returning via the same route.
View the photos from A Walk Along The Cardiff Railway as part of my Merthyr Road collection on Flickr.
Favourite Photo From The Shoot
This photo, taken on my first visit to Cardiff Railway and the Glamorganshire Canal Local Nature Reserve, remains my favourite photo from this shoot. I’d love to successfully develop this style of shot as my “signature shot”.
I also love this shot of the steps leading down to the trackbed, as well as the shot of the initials cut into the tree.
Post Production
Combining photos taken on two separate visits to form a single set of photos can be tricky, given the variance in the British weather. The main problem is always the same - skies and contrast. My main tool for dealing with any tricky situation is conversion to black and white. It feels like a bit of a cop-out, but sometimes I think the results look better than the original colour images.
To try and improve the quality of the black and whites this time, I’ve boosted the brightness and contrast on all of these shots, and then adjusted highlights and shadows to try and even out the differences between the shots. Overall, I’m very happy with the results, and I’ll probably try the same technique again the next time I publish a black and white set.
See Also
As always with these articles, I’m indebted to the information that has already been published about Cardiff Railway. Here’s a list of the sources that I used to compile this article:
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The start of something a bit different, this week. When I’m out photographing the (normally historic) subjects and routes for my Merthyr Road project, I’m always coming across sights that appeal to me as a photographer, but which don’t really fit in all that well with the photos I choose for the final article published here on my blog. Rather than lose these photos, I’ve decided to give each shot its very own article.
First up is this shot of Robert Price Timber and Roofing in Taffs Well. Their timber yard is bounded on the east by the A470 trunk road, and on the south by the former Rhymney Valley Railway line from Walnut Tree Junction (the line now forms part of the Taff Trail cycle route).
Something (maybe a tramroad or railway) used to run north to south through the ground where their yard now stands. There’s a surviving bridge that the former Rhymney Valley Railway line crosses on the south side of the timber yard, and hunting through the trees to the north of the timber yard, there’s the remains of something that looks like it could have been a bridge support.
UPDATE: the something is the remains of the Cardiff Railway route from Tongwynlais to Rhydefelin Halt.
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View these photos as part of my Merthyr Road set on Flickr. Or, if you prefer, view a map with everyone’s photos taken in the same area.
Although many folks around here know about the remains of the old Glamorganshire Canal preserved at Forest Farm, I doubt that many folks know that there’s still a small stretch of the canal still in existence by Tongwynlais, cut in half by the M4 motorway as it heads west from Junction 32 and the Coryton Roundabout. The route down from Tongywnlais along the Taff Trail and then back to Tongwynlais via the Coryton Roundabout makes for an enjoyable - if very muddy! - circular walk that can be done in an hour or two.
Aim Of The Shoot
Page 144 of the award-winning The Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canals - Volume 2 by Stephen Rowson & Ian I. Wright (ISBN 1-903-59912-1) has a photograph of a steam train crossing a bridge at Middle Lock. The note accompanying the photograph states that the remains of the bridge still exists beside a section of the canal cut off by the M4 to the north and the Forest Farm Industrial Estate access road to the south.
I was out to find and photograph this section of the canal.
Thoughts On The Day
Either last year or the year before, Kristi and I cycled the Taff Trail from Taffs Well down to Cardiff and back. At no time did we realise that there were any remains of the old canal nearby; we certainly didn’t know that at one point our path took us to within 100 yards of a surviving stretch.
You can actually see the stretch on this Google map. The Taff Trail comes south down Iron Bridge Road, under the A470, and then turns north-west (right as you look at things) following Iron Bridge Road around a local playing field. However, after emerging from under the A470, if you turn south-east (left as you look) instead, the path beside the picnic area leads straight to a section of the canal, I’d say no more than 200 yards from where you emerge from under the A470. This section runs maybe 3-400 yards in length before disappearing underneath one of the slip roads for Junction 32 of the M4. At that point, you’re forced to turn west, and follow the embankment down to the River Taff and back to the Taff Trail. (When you get to the Taff Trail, it’s well worth turning right and heading north up the Taff Trail a short distance to the Iron Bridge. Alas, there’s no plaque that I could find to provide any details about the bridge, but it does afford a good view of Castle Coch in sunny weather).
The section of the canal to the north of the M4 seems to be completely invisible on the satellite view on Google Maps. But what is still visible is the clear outline of a railway embankment running north west beside the canal. If I have my bearings right, this is part of the old Cardiff Railway which once ran up to the coking plant at Nantgarw - and is just to the north of the bridge and canal section that I was out to track down on this shoot. The old railway line is (at first) impossible to trace on Google Maps as you move south of the M4. The trick is to go to the other end - Coryton Station in Cardiff (where the line ends in this day and age), and then follow the route of the old railway west by north west back up to Long Wood Drive. (The old railway line makes for a nice walk too; I’ll be covering it in a shoot later in the year when we have blue skies once more). Between Long Wood Drive and the M4 lies the remains of the railway bridge that once crossed the Glamorganshire Canal at Middle Lock - the railway bridge from the photograph in the book.
How to find it? As you head south on the Taff Trail from Iron Bridge, you pass under the M4. The Taff Trail continues straight ahead (almost due south) along the bank of the River Taff. There’s another path immediately heading off to the left. Take the path to the left, and follow it along until it ends at another path (which runs west-east along the north side of Longwood Drive - not that you can tell when you’re actually on the walk!) Turn left, heading pretty much due east back towards Coryton Roundabout. The path takes you straight to the section of the canal mentioned in the book, right before it climbs up to the Esso petrol station and the Asda supermarket. The remains of the bridge can be seen to the north of the path, and to the left of the surviving stretch of the canal.
To be honest, there isn’t much to see. This stretch of canal is much more overgrown than the section by Iron Bridge Road, although it doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as silted up. The retaining wall that the bridge must have sprung from can be clearly seen, but nothing else remains at all. Still, I got a bit of a thrill from seeing such a well-hidden remnant of the past - especially as about 100 yards to the south lies the northern end of the Glamorganshire Canal Local Nature Reserve, which is much more frequently visited (probably because it’s nowhere near as overgrown). I’ve already made one (very short) trip to the Glamorganshire Canal Local Nature Reserve; I need to make another visit before I have enough photos to publish as a complete shoot.
To complete the walk, leave the canal by the path that leads up the steps, and follow the path around the north side of the Esso petrol station. This path takes you over a footbridge onto Coryton Roundabout (which is fun to explore), and out the other side over another footbridge back to the A4054 and into Tongwynlais. Although all the paths in this section of the walk are modern and tarmac, I managed to lose my footing at one point - a combination of muddy boots and water running down the slope of the path. Once you’re off the roundabout and back in Tongwynlais, you should be fine.
Overall, the walk’s easy going, with no major inclines to worry infrequent walkers. There’s one set of steps immediately after leaving the canal, and the paths are muddy at this time of year. You get to see two surviving sections of what was once one of the most important canals in the whole United Kingdom, and the early heart of the industrialised South Wales Valleys before the trains took over, plus the remains of a bridge that used to carry one of those railways up into the valleys.
That’s not bad for a Sunday stroll.
Favourite Photo From The Shoot
Although the photograph of the Iron Bridge has quickly become the most viewed photograph from this shoot, I personally prefer this photo. Although it was hardly difficult, I’m still pleased that I managed to find some remains of the bridge that I set out to find on this walk. Further up the valley, there are many places where there isn’t a single trace of the canal or the bridges that used to cross it. Don’t get me wrong - the A470 makes a huge difference to folks like me who live up in the valleys - but there hasn’t been any noticable effort (apart from the Nantgarw Pottery) to preserve at least some memory of the industrial heritage of the 1800’s. Maybe even these few remains will be gone within my lifetime; it’s nice to have a record of what’s there today in case they’re gone tomorrow.
Three Lessons From The Shoot
Although I originally wanted to pick out specific photography techniques from each shoot, the truth is that I don’t pay all that much attention to technique when I’m out and about. I mind the basics - shutter speed vs focal length for sharpness and aperture for depth of field - and then forget about them. The section has never lived up to its “Three Techniques” name, so from now on “Three Lessons” it is.
Instead, I’ll be posting regular mid-week articles on individual photography techniques, which will include technical skills (starting with weening off automatic mode), ideas about composition, and the workflow I follow for getting my photos from the camera through Aperture and up onto Flickr. A separate article will allow me to really get into a single aspect of photography, which will help me learn a lot more about photography.
But that’s to come. For today, the three lessons from this shoot are:
- When I set out on this walk, I didn’t know exactly where the remains of the canal were to be found. To lighten the load, I left the majority of my kit behind, and set out with the D200 and just a single lens. Although there were plenty of moments where I found myself missing one of my other lenses, I definitely enjoyed myself much more because I wasn’t carting a tonne of glass around on my back. For days like these, you can’t beat having a jack-of-all-trades lens. My wife loves her Tamron 28-300 for just this reason. Unfortunately, I don’t like the results from that lens when paired with the D200. I wonder if supplies of Nikon’s 18-200 VR lens have improved recently …?
- If you’re going out and you’re likely to be photographing water, don’t leave your polariser behind. *Cough* I did, and I’m still kicking myself for doing so. On the bright side, it means that I’ll have to go back later in the year (preferably when all the mud has dried out …).
- If the sign says go one way, try going the other. As I mentioned in the introduction to this article, I’ve been down part of this path before, but I had absolutely no idea how close I was to the old canal.
Post Production
I need to rethink the way I’m organising my photos in Aperture. I’ve decided that I hate keywording all of my photos. Even with creating a metadata preset before doing the import, it still takes hours to go through each individual photo and apply the right keywords for that individual frame. I don’t have that sort of time, so I’ve stopped keywording photos in Aperture, but I still manually tag photos on Flickr.
Instead, my photos go into a Merthyr Road project in Aperture. This project is divided up into several folders based on geography - Taffs Well to Treforest for example - and each folder contains an album for each major subject, such as the Glamorganshire Canal or the Cardiff Railway.
The only problem is, of course, that I’ve ended up with several Glamorganshire Canal albums and several Cardiff Railway albums. As the number of shoots racks up, I’d like to be able to look at all my Glamorganshire Canal photos in one place so that I can see how my coverage is doing and what gaps I need to think about plugging in future. I can’t do that with the way I’m organising my photos in Aperture today.
Aperture supports Smart Albums - albums that can automatically pull in photos based on their keywords. I think I need to restructure my Merthyr Road project to make the most of this feature.
Found On Flickr
There aren’t many photos of the Glamorganshire Canal on Flickr at all, and the few that I’ve found really belong with my upcoming shoot of the Local Nature Reserve section of the canal.
But I did manage to find a couple of shots that seemed appropriate to today’s shoot, especially welshlady’s shot of Castle Coch taken from the Iron Bridge, which looks nicer than my attempt at the same shot today.
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View this selection of photos in my Merthyr Road set on Flickr.
The old tin works at Treforest were once the largest in the whole of Britain. Today they have long since closed, and the buildings have fallen into disrepair. Much of the site has been levelled, but what remains provides the faintest of hints of the South Wales Valleys at the height of their industrial glory.
Aim Of The Shoot
From the A470, I’ve often caught a glimpse through the trees to the west of the remains of old factories nestling in the shadow of an old railway embankment. Armed with a couple of bottles of Lucozade and a few bars of my favourite chocolate, I walked down through Pontypridd and Treforest, determined to finally find out just what this place is.
Thoughts On The Day
Walking across the cleared ground, and through the ruins that remain, it’s very difficult to imagine that this was once part of the most important industrial complex in Britain - and therefore the world, thanks to the British Empire. The chains for the Titanic were made just to the north. Coal for the Royal Navy came from further north, passing by using the canal and later the crazy rail network that once criss-crossed the valley. Iron came down from Merthyr. Just to the south lay the second-largest tin works in Britain - it’s claim as the biggest stolen by the works here in Treforest.
Now it’s just a handful of ruined sheds surrounded by a security fence that the locals pay no attention to, all buttressed up against the remains of a railway embankment that (it appears) used to end in a viaduct across the valley. There are no signs to mark its passing, save one - a modern sign proclaiming that the local allotments are called the Tin Works Allotments. Indeed, it’s left to the two bricked-up tunnels to the east of the ruins - and an open tunnel that lies immediately to the west that begs a return visit - to provide the only hint that this was once such an important site.
It isn’t just the old tunnels that are striking. The local kids have covered some of the walls (both inside the works, and on some of the buildings outside the grounds) with some great graffiti. I know that graffiti is generally considered an nuisance and a menace by today’s society, and I’m sure that there are plenty of folks who wish for less politically-correct days when they could just pack these troublesome miscreants off to one of the colonies … but at the same time, I think the ones I found in the old tin works are really good. Given a choice, I’d rather kids were drawing things than mugging old ladies
I’m going to save the photos of the site itself for another posting on another day. I took over a hundred and fifty pictures of the site, and I need time to sort through them and process the ones worth publishing.
Favourite Photo From The Shoot
It feels like I’m cheating. By breaking up this shoot into several postings, I get to have more than just one favourite photo - even though it was all the same shoot There were several pieces of great graffiti that I captured during the shoot, but my favourite photo has to be this one. I think it does the best job of getting that balance right between subject and context.
What’s your favourite photo from the shoot? Let me know in the comments below.
Three Tips From The Shoot
- You can’t beat local knowledge. Families walking their dogs tend to know all the best routes, and where it’s safe to walk (both from a danger point of view, and from a avoiding-trouble-from-landowners point of view).
- Speaking of danger … you can’t walk around these places with your eye glued to the viewfinder. Apart from the very real risk of tripping over something and cutting yourself on sharp things on the ground, you’re in danger of falling down uncovered shafts at any time.
- Most photo composition comes down to showing a subject in a context. In this selection of shots, the subject was meant to be the graffiti, and the context was meant to be the ruins that the graffiti has been painted onto. I didn’t maintain the discipline required, and quite a few of my shots [example] ended up the wrong way around.
Post Production
Part-way through processing the images from this shoot, my workflow with Aperture began to take shape. Rather than post the full details here, I’ll put together some example images of the workflow in action and publish them as a separate blog entry in the near future. (I’d like to start posting technique-focused entries mid-week to balance the weekend shoots - this’ll make a good first or second article).
Found On Flickr
I haven’t managed to find any other photos on Flickr of the Treforest Tin Works at all. That’s a real shame, especially when you realise that the University of Glamorgan can be found literally just down the road.
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