Evolution of the Railway 215 



below. The fall from Merthir-Tidvil to Cardiff is nearly 600 

 feet." 



In a later reference, dated 1802, Phillips says that the 

 completion of the Glamorganshire Canal " has opened a ready 

 conveyance to the vast manufacture of iron established in 

 the mountains of that country, and many thousands of tons 

 are now annually shipped from thence." 



The canal, however, failed to meet all requirements, a 

 scheme for a railway, or dram-road, between Cardiff and 

 Merthyr being projected in the same year that the water- 

 way was first opened. 



In " Rees' Cyclopaedia " (1819) it is stated : " The rail- 

 ways hitherto constructed were private property, or for the 

 accommodation of particular mines or works, and it was not, 

 we believe, until about the year 1794 that Mr Samuel Horn- 

 fray and others obtained an act of Parliament for constructing 

 an iron dram-road, tram-road or rail- way between Cardiff and 

 Merthyr Tidvill in South Wales, that should be free for any 

 persons to use, with drams or trams of the specified con- 

 struction on paying certain tonnage or rates per mile to the 

 proprietors." Tredgold, in his " Practical Treatise on Rail- 

 roads " (1825), makes a similar statement as regards the 

 granting of an Act in 1794, saying that " in consequence of 

 the upper part of the Cardiff or Glamorganshire canal being 

 frequently in want of water, the Cardiff and Merthyr rail- 

 way or tram-road was formed parallel to it, for a distance of 

 about nine miles, chiefly for the iron works of Plymouth, 

 Pendarran and Dowlais," with a continuation, however, 

 making a total distance of about 26| miles. The tramway, 

 he further says, " appears to have been constructed under 

 the first Act ever obtained for this species of road." 



These statements have been accepted and repeated by 

 various writers ; but a search of the " House of Commons 

 Journals " for 1794 fails to show that any such Act was 

 passed. The scheme in question seems to have been pro- 

 jected, in 1794, by certain ironmasters, who found that their 

 own traffic on the canal was being prejudiced by a preference 

 given to the traffic of their rivals ; but the project for a 

 tramway or railway from Merthyr to Cardiff was abandoned 

 for a time in favour of one from Merthyr to a place 

 then called Navigation, and now known as Abercynon, 



