Tonypandy railway station
This station was a late addition to the Taff Vale Railway’s Rhondda Fawr line. It opened in 1908 and soon proved useful to the authorities during the Tonypandy riots (see below). The 1948 aerial photo is shown here courtesy of the Welsh Government – see the footnotes for details of what’s visible.
‘Tonypandy and Trealaw’ station was positioned by the river and railway bridges connecting Trealaw to Tonypandy. It had a hydraulic luggage lift and platforms each side of the three-track railway. Alongside were sidings for the Pandy and Anthony collieries, which were across the river and part of the Naval Colliery complex. A goods shed near the station handled local deliveries.
Only the platform for trains towards Pontypridd survives. The A4058 bypass road occupies former railway land, and a roundabout hems in the station.
The first station master here, William Henry Venn, received a purse of gold and inscribed “cutlery and carvers for his wife” Edith on his promotion to Treherbert station. At his farewell event in a hotel on 15 October 1910, he was thankful that Tonypandy’s station staff worked loyally together at this time of labour disputes.
Three weeks later, labour disputes boiled over at Tonypandy. Disagreement between colliery employees and managers sparked rioting and looting. Home Secretary Winston Churchill put soldiers on standby while police reinforcements were rushed in from Cardiff, Bristol and London.
The Metropolitan Police sent 200 unmounted constables from London by the mail train to Cardiff on 7 November. Their carriages were detached and sent on “with as little delay as possible” to Pontypridd, where 50 constables were dispatched to Aberaman (scene of another major dispute). The other 150 caught the next train to Tonypandy, where they were greeted by stone-throwing youths.
Meanwhile, a special train took 70 mounted police and their horses from London to Cardiff, where the Taff Vale Railway attached an engine “with great promptitude” for onward travel. The disturbances were quelled but soldiers were sent in as a precaution.
Over the next fortnight, striking miners watched every train arrival at Tonypandy for suspected “blacklegs” (people who worked during strikes) and entered signal boxes to halt goods trains suspected of containing blacklegs. When four men dressed in dungarees arrived at the station, strikers took them to the river and “immersed” them before sending them back to Cardiff on the next train. Two blacklegs from the Glamorgan Colliery were escorted to Tonypandy station by pickets and a crowd of women and children.
Postcode: CF40 2TU View Location Map
Footnotes: What you can see in the aerial photo
The surviving station platform is to the right of the railway tracks, near the centre. Opposite is the footbridge off the road bridge which led to the other platform. The station building beside the footbridge contained the luggage lift, and a barrow crossing from its ground floor provided level access over the colliery track to the platform.
Behind that platform are three wagons delivering pit props (wooden posts for shoring up underground colliery passages). A wall of pit props separates the sidings from the station and main line. The goods shed and signal box are in the top right corner, above Trealaw Primary School. In the bottom left corner is the pithead of Pandy colliery.