The Dulas Valley Mineral Railway was incorporated in 1862 to bring coal from the Onllwyn area north-east of Neath to the quays there, and in the following year was reconstituted as the Neath and Brecon Railway. The line was opened as far as Onllwyn in 1863.
The directors allowed a contractor John Dickson a free hand in building the line and when he became bankrupt the company was in a desperate financial situation. Nevertheless, the line was completed to Brecon in 1867, and an offshoot to connect with the Swansea Vale Railway, giving better access to Swansea, was ready in 1873.
The larger Midland Railway acquired rights over the line and ran a heavy mineral train service for many years, although the remote and difficult course of the line was expensive to operate. After the 1922 "Grouping" of the railways, a pooling agreement led to the diversion of the heavy traffic to routes that were easier to work over, and the line reverted to a quiet and remote rural line.
The passenger service was withdrawn in 1962 and present-day (2017) traffic is confined to uncertain mineral business from Onllwyn to Neath.
Brecon Forest Tramroad
Brecon had long been a market and agricultural town, but its location within hilly terrain discouraged early communication routes.
In 1812 the Crown Estate sold 12,000 acres of forest land in Fforest Fawr to John Christie, an industrialist and entrepreneur. Christie thought that the band of limestone lying across the area was a commercial opportunity.
He needed a means of transport to move the heavy mineral to kilns for firing, and he determined to build what became the Brecon Forest Tramroad to do so. The original route was to lead from Fan Gyhirych, at an altitude of about 1,500 feet and descend to near present-day Sennybridge. However the long route over difficult terrain was discouraging, and in addition he needed to link in a source of coal for the firing process. A modified route was adopted, from quarries lower in the Tawe Valley at 1,267 feet; this involved hauling the limestone up for the first part of the journey to the pass known as Bwlch Bryn-rhudd.
This line was completed in 1824; it was a gauge plateway. The economics of the business were imperfect: the limestone was hauled a considerable distance north-east, when the potential market for sales was in the south west. Moreover, access to coal reserves was also still difficult. He acquired the Drum (or Drim) Colliery late in 1822 and extended the tramroad down to the Swansea Canal at Gwaun-clawdd; he acquired a further colliery near there, as well as 24 canal barges.
These acquisitions over-extended Christie financially, and at the end of 1827 he became bankrupt.
A creditor named Joseph Claypon purchased the tramroad (through the Brecon Forest Tramroad Company) in 1831, and extended it to Gurnos and made other improvements. This extension was called Claypon's Tramroad Extension, or the Brecon Forest Branch Tramroad, and was ready in 1834.
Hay Railway
In 1811 the Hay Railway received Parliamentary approval to build its line, in fact another 3 ft 6in gauge plateway, from Watton, on the Brecknock and Abergavenny Canal (later part of the in Brecon, to Hay and Eardisley). The Brecknock and Abergavenny Canal later became part of the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal and Hay is now known as Hay-on-Wye. The line opened in 1816.
It continued an unexceptional business conveying rural merchandise, but by the beginning of the 1860s more modern railways were being considered at a time when the Hay Railway with its horse-drawn plateway wagons, was looking extremely obsolescent. In 1863 the Hay Railway had obtained Parliamentary powers to modernise its line, but apparently without doing much of the actual work of modernising, it offered its line for sale, at a time when three railway companies were considering building on at least part of its route: the Mid Wales Railway, the Hereford, Hay and Brecon Railway and the Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway.
The three companies wanted to build their lines on the same ground for at least part of the way, and at length wasteful triplication was avoided, when they agreed to share out the Hay Railway and to build end-to-end. The Brecon and Merthyr Railway built its line from Talyllyn Junction to the Watton station at Brecon, opening in early 1863 from Pant on the northern margin of Merthyr.
By this time Neath had become heavily industrialised, and lay on the line of the South Wales Railway, opened there in 1850. The South Wales Railway was a broad gauge trunk line and was to connect the area in to the network of the Great Western Railway, with through trains to London.