The lost Kerry Branchline and Abermule Station - disused railway

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[00:00:07]Hello and welcome to the new video and I'm here in Mid Wales tracing the route of the Kerry branch and looking for old relics like this bridge. I'm just east of Newtown in Powys a place called Abermule at the start of the 3 and 3/4 mile branch.

[00:00:25]So looking at this map we've got the Oswestry and Newtown line running top to bottom and the Kerry branch running off to the right. This old photo shows the basic layout of the station with the main line running straight ahead with the branch line going off to the right.

[00:00:39]So just looking now towards the site of Abermule station and we've got the station house that survives just beyond the level crossing.

[00:00:49]The station was opened by the Oswestry and Newtown Railway in 1860 and it became a junction with the Kerry Railway in 1863.

[00:00:59]Here's an old view of the station site dated from around 1980. So there's a little bit of the platform that survives beyond that gate in front of the houses.

[00:01:07]So where we're looking now towards where the lights are for the crossing, that was where the sort of an island platform was with the Kerry branch going off on this side here.

[00:01:24]So the Kerry branch would have cut across the road right in front of me now.

[00:01:30]I'm turning round.

[00:01:32]This is the old track bed of the Kerry branch which you can see going off towards the right.

[00:01:39]On the 26th of January 1921 there was a tragic accident at Abermule station which saw the loss of 17 lives.

[00:01:50]So we've got the remains of the bridge here.

[00:01:55]That I think beyond the tree would have been the railway bridge.

[00:02:03]And there for the river.

[00:02:05]Unfortunately, I can't find the name for either of these bridges, but it crosses what's known as the Afon or River Mule.

[00:02:17]It would have continued underneath that bridge.

[00:02:28]And that's the track bed towards Kerry.

[00:02:34]So, the first intermediate stop on the line was Cyfronydd Halt, opened in 1923 by the Great Western Railway, closing as early as 1931.

[00:02:47]This map shows location of it. Just looking down from the overbridge onto the site of the halt, the platform's located just to the left of the wall in the center of the view now.

[00:02:58]Unfortunately, it's quite overgrown, but I did find this view of it on Google Street View.

[00:03:06]And the track bed looking towards Kerry.

[00:03:11]Next up was Cyfronydd Halt, also opened 1923 to 1931.

[00:03:17]There's nothing surviving of that today.

[00:03:19]It's somewhere where this entrance to this yard is.

[00:03:24]We're now in Glan Mule, the white building is the former Kerry station, what was the terminus of the railway line.

[00:03:35]Kerry station opened with the line in 1863 and survived for passenger use until 1931 and goods to 1956.

[00:03:45]The station building survives in residential use, and here's a view again from Google Street View, looking at it from probably where the buffer stops were. I did get a photograph of the green building here, which is the old engine shed and the building in the center of this view, which is supposedly at the goods yard office. There was a 2-ft gauge tramway or railway that linked the station to the Bryn Lluarth estate and we used to transport timber, stone, and livestock down to the station for onward transportation on that from that work. So, that concludes our look at the Kerry branch built for transporting livestock. I hope you enjoyed the video.

[00:04:27]If you have, please give it a like or a hype and subscribe to this channel.

[00:04:31]Thanks for watching. See you on the next one.