The North Pembrokeshire and Fishguard Railway was a railway company in south-west Wales, incorporated to extend the moribund Narberth Road and Maenclochog Railway, with a view to developing a port on Fishguard Bay and ferry services to Rosslare in Ireland.
The Narberth Road and Maenclochog Railway had been opened in 1876 to connect slate quarries at Rosebush with the main line of the Great Western Railway; it also carried passengers and general merchandise, and the line had an exceptionally steep gradient. The line was not profitable and closed in 1882.
The North Pembrokeshire and Fishguard Railway was promoted in 1884, planned to build from Rosebush to Goodwick, on Fishguard Bay. At this time the Great Western Railway operated a ferry service to Ireland from Neyland (New Milford) and the NP&FR boldly sought to challenge this with a shorter crossing to Rosslare. The proprietors were to improve the harbour at Rosslare as well, and planned to work collaboratively with the Narberth Road line.
The steep gradients and sharp curves on that line would have made the through route exceptionally difficult, but another company, the Fishguard and Rosslare Railway and Harbour Company was incorporated in 1893 and bought out the smaller lines, and extended to a station at Fishguard Harbour. In addition the F&RR&H took over a considerable extent of railway in Ireland based in Rosslare. The Great Western Railway built a better-aligned route to Fishguard, opened fully in 1906 when the ferry service transferred to Fishguard. The new line bypassed the Rosebush railways, which reverted to the status of local rural lines, and they declined and were closed in 1937.
South Wales Railway
The Great Western Railway was completing its main line between London and Bristol, and in 1844 the company's engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was surveying a line that would connect the GWR Gloucester branch to Cardiff, Swansea and Fishguard. A prospectus was issued in the name of the South Wales Railway. The significance of Fishguard was that the GWR intended, with the collaboration of new railways in Ireland, to capture the contract for the official mail traffic between London and Dublin. Hitherto this had been carried from Holyhead to Kingstown (now known as Dún Laoghaire), but the road transit to Holyhead was long and difficult. A ferry from Fishguard to "a new port south of Wexford" and efficient rail connections on both sides of the crossing could be competitive.
The South Wales Railway was incorporated on 4 August 1845. It was always in effect a subsidiary of the Great Western Railway, and a perpetual lease by the GWR of the SWR in December 1846 was agreed to start from the completion to Fishguard. There were difficulties about the route at the Gloucester end of the South Wales Railway, and Brunel began to have misgivings about the suitability of Fishguard, which at the time had no sheltered harbour facilities. In 1845 there was widespread loss of the potato crop on which a majority of Irish people depended for a living, resulting in mass starvation and commercial depression, which deepened the following year. The catastrophe is known as the Great Famine. With unfortunate timing, the Waterford, Wexford, Wicklow and Dublin Railway secured its authorising Act of Parliament on 16 July 1846; capital £2 million.
Observing the deepening crisis in Ireland, the WWW&DR company cut back its plans and declared that it could not build to Wexford. For the time being a rail and ferry route to Dublin via Fishguard was impossible. Brunel had all along entertained thoughts of developing the transatlantic shipping trade from south-west Wales, and he declared this in 1844. Whereas the Irish ferry service was reliant on the shortest possible sea crossing, transatlantic shipping had different priorities. Linking with his doubts about the general suitability of Fishguard, he agreed with the Board of the South Wales Railway that it would not now build to Fishguard. A branch of the planned Fishguard line was to run to Haverfordwest and the decision was taken to extend that line to a harbour on Milford Haven, where there was a deep anchorage. The railway's terminus was given that name, but later it was changed to Neyland, and another harbour and station nearby was named Milford Haven.