THREAD

Look at a rail map of Wales and you’ll notice a pattern. All of the main railway lines run horizontally. Look closer and you’ll also notice a cluster of lines in the Valleys. Remarkably, there’s not a single line that spans the length of Wales, connecting north & south.

In order to travel from Caerdydd to Conwy, then you first have to take a long detour through England. This makes Wales unique in Europe in being the only country that you can’t traverse by train without having to spend most of the journey passing through the country next door.

So why does Wales lack a unified rail network? And what might our lack of rail infrastructure reveal to us about the economic history of our country?

The reason why our rail network looks the way it does today is due to the conditions under which it was constructed during the 19th century. In contrast to most European countries at the time, not a penny of govt money was invested in the construction of national rail projects.

This meant that the task of building railways was left instead to wealthy industrialists whose decisions about where to lay down track were motivated purely by commercial interests.

At the time, this meant connecting the former coalfields of the Valleys and the slate quarries of Gwynedd to nearby ports, such as Caerdydd and Porthmadog as well as to populous areas of England— especially the booming metropolis of London.

This economic pattern of harvesting and exporting the natural resources of a country for sale or trade abroad is known as an extractive economy.

Because our railroads were initially constructed with the purpose of transporting natural resources, no careful deliberation or planning was invested into designing and constructing a coherent national rail network that would bring the people of Wales closer together.

As the editor of the ‘Welsh Outlook’ lamented in 1920, “From the national point of view our rail system is the worst in the world”.

The integrity of our rail network was dealt a further blow by the Beeching Cuts, which axed the few miles of vertical track that once existed between Caerfyrddin and Aberystwyth and Pwllheli and Bangor, further compounding the difficulty of travelling around the country.

As a result, to make the journey by train from Caerfyrddin to Aberystwyth— some 40 miles as the crow flies— takes an astonishing 7 hours!

Although a lot has changed over the past 50 years, our rail network, sadly, remains inadequate to this day. With the advent of Devolution, and with a nascent Parliament, we are now better placed than ever to begin creating a truly national rail network— fit for the 21st century.

Check out this thread in its original video format:

Why Wales Lacks a Unified Rail Network