TEIFI VALLEY
NARROW GAUGE
RAILWAY
"pay once and ride all day"

About the Railway

This page is to give you a little information about the railway, for more information, we sell a book from the cafe which is very extensive on the topic!

The Teifi Valley Railway as it is seen today is the latest gauge to be set on an old trackbed.

Originally designed as the broad gauge Carmarthen to Cardigan line, it was intended to get public and goods to Cardigan via the market towns such as Newcastle Emlyn and Llandysul and in 1854, recieved an Act of Parliment in order to buy the lands from Carmarthen to Newcastle Emlyn. In 1860, the line was opened temporarily from Carmarthen to Conwil and operated by the South Wales Railway. It was 1861 when the railway was reopened and the line was under the ownership of the Carmarthen and Cardigan railway and three years later extensions to Pencader and then Llandysul were finished, where a horse drawn bus could be caught for the the rest of the journey to Cardigan. In 1872 the line had converted to standard gauge although parts had already been mixed gauge, and so the second track gauge had been laid on the track bed. However, things did not go to plan. The line was bankrupt by the time it got to Llandysul and they soon realised that Cardigan would not be reachable because Cenarth had already become a tourist destination due to its waterfalls. This combined with a road meant that there was no room for a railway in the gorge.

The railway line however was not to be disused however. The Great Western Railway in 1881 brought the railway and by 1895 had moved its terminus to Newcastle Emlyn, which served as the terminus up until 1973 when the line was finally closed. Although a group of volunteers made attempts to purchase and preserve it as a standard gauge line, they were defeated.

In 1981, a group of people brought the trackbed and in 1983, with the help of funding and labour from the Manpower Services Commision the new gauge of two foot was laid and the Teifi Valley Railway was born. The line starts at Henllan where the old platforms, cattle docks and sometimes in the summer the station footings can be seen. Pontprenshitw served as the first terminus, the name derived from the original wooden structure which means "shaky wooden bridge". Since then we have had two further extensions, one to Llandyfriog and another to the current end of the line due to half of a bridge collapsing into the river. The platform is often called 'Riverside'.

The locomotives that haul the trains are heritage locomotives in their own right, our oldest locomotive Alan George is 114 years old and still works hard. Originally a quarry locomotive, she has found herself a home at the railway along with another locomotive that shared the same quarry. Sgt Murphy, a World War I locomotive made its way to wales and now shares a shed again with Alan George. We also have another steam locomotive, soon to be restored that is another veteren of World War I as well as a selection of many diesels some of which are on open display.