Taff Vale Tank

Nowhere else in Britain has there been a network of railways comparable with those of South Wales at the turn of the century.

Almost every Welsh valley was served by its own privately owned railway; the Rhymney Railway, the Taff Vale, the Barry Railway and many others were all little-known but vitally important lines whose main concern was carrying coal from the mines to the docks at Newport, Barry and Cardiff.

Each railway had to contend with problems of steep gradients, sharp curves and lightly laid colliery sidings.

With the exception of the Barry, which had a few big 0-8-2 tank engines, all entrusted their coal traffic to 0-6-2 tank designs, and when the Great Western Railway, which absorbed the South Wales lines in 1921, found it necessary to replace much of the older Welsh motive power and a new 0-6-2 tank design was produced based on the best features of the Rhymney and Taff Vale engines.

Nevertheless, many of the original machines survived to come into British Railways ownership, and one of these long-lived engines is shown here in B.R. livery. No. 360 was one of the Taff Vale locomotives of Class ' A,' designed by Cameron in 1914 and reboilered by the G.W.R. after the Grouping; with their 5ft 3 in wheels the 'A' class engines also found employment on the Cardiff suburban services, but it is for their sterling work for so many years on the coal trains that these South Wales tanks will be best remembered.