The Graig Tunnel

Earlier this year, I began working for Glamorgan University in Treforrest, South Wales. While using the Stilts restaurant on campus, I saw what appeared to be a bricked up tunnel mouth in the car park, and my curiosity was piqued. Cue a camera click…

Bricked up tunnel-mouth, Treforrest Campus

This was one end of the Graig Tunnel, one of the few remainders of the long-defunct Barry Railway. This railway line began construction in 1885, and duplicated much of the routes used by its competitors. Eventually it was absorbed into the Great Western Railway in 1923.

 

At the other end of the tunnel sat Barry Railway’s ‘Pontypridd’ station, a few hundred yards up the road from the more recognisable (and still in use today) Taff Vale Railway ‘Pontypridd’ station. Following the unification of the lines, on 1/7/1924 Barry’s station was renamed ‘Pontypridd Graig’, while it’s Taff Vale counterpart became ‘Pontypridd Central’. The Graig station eventually went the way of the dodo, and ‘Pontypridd Central’ lost the ‘Central’, and became the big daddy of railway stations within the Valleys.

 

 

Bricked up on campus, April 2011

 

So let’s have a bit of a wander back through the years. We’ll start where I did, at the bricked up tunnel mouth on Glamorgan’s campus… There’s not a great deal there now. A tarmac car park broadly follows the old trackbed for a while, but that’s about it. 

Still bricked up, mid 1950's

 

Stepping back a little further, you can see it’s in a better state now than it was in the mid-1950′s, but it’s still a shadow of its former self…

 

Tunnel mouth, Treforrest, 1922

 

 

But going back further still I found a photo from the Rhondda Cynon Taff archives from somewhere around 1922, which shows the tunnel as it was while it was still in use under the Barry Railway era. As you can see, it’s in much better nick here… this line ran on down the Valleys before veering off toward Barry (passing in parallel the Walnut Tree Viaduct, which I’ve detailed in a previous post). 

 

So onto (or rather, into) the tunnel itself. Yes, it’s still there. No, you can’t get into it. Well, not legally at least. It is still on recent Ordinance Survey maps of Pontypridd…

 

OS map of Pontypridd. Conviently, the tunnel is marked as 'disused tunnel'.

 

 On the map, you see the University in the bottom right corner, and there’s a small red arrow in the top right, noting the other end of the tunnel – right smack in the grounds of the present-day Dewi Sant Hospital car park. The small red dot nearby the arrow is the current-day Pontypridd station, so you can see how close the two rival stops were.

 

Inside the tunnel, June 2011

 

There’s little to see in the tunnel itself. This picture was taken from the hospital side, through the barrier, and as you can see it looks fairly okay structurally, but it’s very damp and not pretty. Some kids have lost a football in there, and I’m pretty sure that the light source at the back of the tunnel is NOT the other mouth (as it’s bricked up, natch). I think it’s probably a contractor’s vehicle, or crane or something, and the light is reflecting off the number plate. I could be wrong though.

 

Hospital side platform remains.

At the bottom corner of the tunnel mouth are the sole remains of the Graig station itself – the small receding slope of one of the platforms. The platforms and the tunnel weren’t built together – the tunnel was cut through in 1888 (a date it proudly bears over the hospital-side tunnel mouth), and the station itself was added later, in 1896. 

  

1888. A mere 123 years ago, at time of writing.

 

So let’s have a gander at the hospital-side tunnel mouth as it looks today. There’s absolutely nothing remaining of the Graig station at all, the platforms and trackbed are long gone… time and development has surely swept them away.

 

No station here....

 

The view away from the tunnel.

You can see from the view looking away from the tunnel exactly where the station used to run, but it’s all bricked up and a telephone exchange building now sits on the site where the bottom end of the station would have run, and it’s trackbed along with it. The grating over the tunnel mouth is a very recent addition – for the last few decades it’s been totally bricked up. At least it now affords us a view into the tunnel’s murky depths.

 

Going back a few years, we get to see the finishing of construction of the hospital car park around 2005. Going back to 1999, a neat view of the opposite wall not yet bricked up, and with the overgrown platforms now still visible underneath the grass…

 

August 2005

 

The view away, back in 1999.

At this point in time the old remains of the Graig station are looking quite shabby, having remained untouched since at least the early 1970′s. The next two pics are from May 1973, and it’s clear to see that the station has been neglected for quite some time… the bricked up tunnel-mouth here is a little different to the one from 2005, so that’s obviously been amended over the years, but little else has been tended too, with lots of debris and rubble littering the place (presumably as a result of the next picture…)

 

 

 

The old platforms are more visible in 1973.

 

 

Another view of the crumbling platforms from 1973.

 

 

Skipping back even further to 1965, we see the buildings unceremoniously dumped on the site to help with the building of the Dewi Sant hospital itself.

 

Dewi Sant hospital under construction... 1965

 And prior to that, I could find very little else in terms of imagery of the old station… until I stumbled across this… This view of the station seems to be taken from the site of the telephone exchange, but it gives you an idea of the size of it, and of how sadly neglected it eventually became. Operating from 16/3/1896 until 7/7/1930, passenger traffic was finally re-routed through Pontypridd Central from 10/7/1930, and it runs as such to this day. The line here and toward Tonteg was briefly re-used just before D-Day in the Second World War to store railway engines bound for Europe, as the deep valleys that the line ran through provided good bomb cover, but following the end of the war the true decline of the Valley’s railway network began, leaving Pontypridd Graig station nothing but a footnote in Valley’s transport history, and a disused railway tunnel in a hospital and university car park.

Happier days for the station during its Barry Railways days, as 'Pontypridd'. 1922

 

Photography credit to Ceri Jones, Nick Catford, Chris Howells, Courtney Haydon & Cyril Crawley and Rhondda Cynon Taff county council.

Further reading: www.trackbed.com, www.disused-stations.org.uk/p/pontypridd_graig/index.shtml, www.ratsandwich.co.uk, www.rcts.org.uk/features/mysteryphotos/show.htm?img=B-65-13, http://archive.rhondda-cynon-taf.gov.uk, www.flickr.com/photos/cerij4242/

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