A West coast railway for Wales

This interesting video is from the excellent Syniadau blog. It maps out a route for a railway line linking the entire West Coast of Wales from Swansea to Llandudno via Aberystwyth. Aber features about nine minutes forty seconds into the twenty minute video. You can go straight to that point via the scroll bar.

The idea of a West coast line has been raised sporadically over the years since the old Aberystwyth-Carmarthen line closed, most notably by Friends of the Earth Cymru in 1998, but without really taking root. Clearly the current financial climate is not conducive to this kind of grand scheme but it would surely be cheaper than some of the road schemes we’ve seen. Some sections of the route are a bit far fetched (not least the Pen Dinas tunnel!) but I’m featuring it here because I like to keep the general idea of a West coast railway in the air.