Page "Pontypool" Paragraph 7

Pontypool still has a passenger rail link, but as the main Cardiff-Crewe line skirts the town it is well over a mile from the town centre.

Pontypool Road as it was originally known, became a major and important junction, engine shed and marshalling yard, but the decline of the railways after the war, combined with the run-down of the mining industry, hit the area badly and all the local passenger and coal lines have been closed and the tracks removed.

Passenger services to Usk and Monmouth ended in 1955, and the line to Neath and Swansea ( which also stopped at a station called Pontypool Clarence Street on the edge of the town centre ) closed in 1964-the latter being the only rail service in the area which actually did fall victim to Dr Beeching.

In 1972 the station was renamed to just " Pontypool " and again in 1994 to " Pontypool and New Inn ", to reflect its actually location in the suburb to the south-east of the town, but it is now an unmanned station with few amenities, and only approximately half of the passenger trains on the line stop there, the rest going straight through.