On 6 Feburary 2008 the Ebbw Vale Railway was reopened for passenger services for the first time in many decades; the last service operating on this line in 1962. It is always good news to see disused lines coming back into use to serve communities that used to be served by public transport in better ways than just an infrequent bus service that saunters along going nowhere fast.
There will be an hourly passenger service (run by Arriva Trains Wales) in both directions with six stations served in Phase 1 of the reopening, the journey taking approximately 55 minutes. These stations are Rogerstone, Risca and Pontymister, Crosskeys, Newbridge, Llanhilleth and Ebbw Vale Parkway. There are plans in the future to extend the service to Newport as well as the Phase 1 terminus of Cardiff which would include a further four stations if approval was granted: Ebbw Vale, Abertillery, Cwm and Pye Corner.
The six reopened stations will be unmanned and feature only a basic set of facilities. There will be shelters with seating, real time service information boards, lighting, help point, CCTV monitoring, cycle lockers and car parking.The project was generously funded by three bodies in the main: European Regional Development Fund (£7.5 million), Corus Steelworks Regeneration Fund (£7 million) and the Welsh Assembly Government Transport Grant (the remainder). The total route from start to finish is 18 miles.
The full route plan can be viewed on Blaenau Gwent Council’s website dedicated to the new line reopening project.
We wish the area luck with their new reopening and hope that Phase 2 can be expedited for operational use as soon as possible. If this kind of thing was done nationally throughout the United Kingdom, we would have a railway system that was actually fit for purpose and not run just for the convenience of government and its executive agencies.
You can chart the progress of the railway reopening project from the early stages in 2006 from the colourful brochures made available by the construction partners below (these are pdf files so you’ll need Adobe Reader to view them):