Swansea Railway Station
Swansea railway station serves the city of Swansea, Wales. It is sited from Paddington railway station, London Paddington, via , on the National Rail network, although most services use a shorter route via . In 2023/24, it was the third-busiest station in Wales, after Cardiff Central railway station, Cardiff Central and Newport railway station, Newport. History The station opened in 1850.History of the Great Western Railway, E.T. MacDermot (rev. C.R. Clinker, pub. Ian Allan, 1964) It was built by the South Wales Railway, which amalgamated with the Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1863; it was not originally on the South Wales Railway main line, planned to connect London with the port of Fishguard, and Swansea passengers had to change at , two miles to the north until at least 1879. The station has been renovated and extended several times in its lifetime – most notably in the 1880s, when the stone-built office block facing High Street, on the west side of the station, was add ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Swansea
Swansea ( ; ) is a coastal City status in the United Kingdom, city and the List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, second-largest city of Wales. It forms a Principal areas of Wales, principal area, officially known as the City and County of Swansea (). The city is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, twenty-eighth largest in the United Kingdom. Located along Swansea Bay in south-west Wales, with the principal area covering the Gower Peninsula, it is part of the Swansea Bay (region), Swansea Bay region and part of the Historic counties of Wales, historic county of Glamorgan and the ancient Welsh commote of Gŵyr. The principal area is the second most List of Welsh principal areas by population, populous local authority area in Wales, with an estimated population of in . Swansea, along with Neath and Port Talbot, forms the Swansea urban area, with a population of 300,352 in 2011. It is also part of the Swansea Bay City Region. During the 19th-century industrial heyday, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mumbles Railway
The Swansea and Mumbles Railway was the venue for the world's first passenger horsecar railway service, located in Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom. Originally built under an act of Parliament, the Oystermouth Railway or Tramroad Act 1804, to move limestone from the quarries of Mumbles to Swansea and to the markets beyond, it carried the world's first fare-paying railway passengers under an agreement effective from 25 March 1807. It later moved from horse power to steam locomotion, and was finally converted to electric power, using the largest tram cars ever built for service in Britain, before closing in January 1960, in favour of motor buses. At the time of the railway's closure, it was claimed to have been the world's longest serving railway, although this distinction has to be qualified because other railways which were used solely for goods traffic (e.g. the Middleton Railway in Leeds, Yorkshire, dating from 1758) had been operating for longer. History In the ( 44 Geo. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Swanline
Swanline is the name of the local rail service from to , on the South Wales Main Line. History The Swanline service was launched in June 1994, following the construction of five new stations at , , , and on the existing South Wales Main Line. Originally, an hourly service was provided through a partnership between British Rail and local government, with the local authorities securing EU development funding and retaining ownership of the trains needed to operate the service. During 1997, as part of railway privatisation, responsibility for Swanline services passed from British Rail's Regional Railways sector to South Wales & West Railway, a newly created franchised train operating company. In 1999, the company halved the service to two-hourly, citing poor passenger usage and offering to purchase the rolling stock for use elsewhere. From 2003 to 2018, the line was operated as part of the Arriva Trains Wales franchise. In 2018, the franchise passed to KeolisAmey Wale ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Inter-city Rail
Inter-city rail services are Express train, express trains that run services that connect cities over longer distances than Commuter rail, commuter or Regional rail, regional trains. They include rail services that are neither short-distance commuter rail trains within one city area nor slow regional rail trains stopping at all stations and covering local journeys only. An inter-city train is typically an express train with limited stops and comfortable carriages to serve long-distance travel. Inter-city rail sometimes provides international services. This is most prevalent in Europe because of the proximity of its 50 countries to a 10,180,000-square-kilometre (3,930,000-square-mile) area. Eurostar and EuroCity are examples. In many European countries, the word InterCity or Inter-City is an official brand name for a network of regular-interval and relatively long-distance train services that meet certain criteria of speed and comfort. That use of the term appeared in the United ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Train Operating Companies
In the railway system of Great Britain, a train operating company (TOC) is a railway undertaking operating passenger trains under the collective National Rail brand. TOCs have existed since the privatisation of the network under the Railways Act 1993. There are two types of TOC: most hold franchises let by the Department for Transport (DfT) through a tendering system, to operate services on certain routes for a specified duration, while a small number of open-access operators hold licences to provide supplementary services on chosen routes. These operators can run services for the duration of the licence validity. The franchised operators have changed considerably since privatisation: previous franchises have been divided, merged, re-let to new operators, or renamed. Some privately-operated franchises have been taken over by a government-owned operator of last resort, due either to failing expectations or to events on the rail system as a whole. The term is also sometimes u ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Manchester Piccadilly Train At Platform 4, Swansea Station (geograph 6324018)
Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92 million, and the largest in Northern England. It borders the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The city borders the boroughs of Trafford, Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, Stockport, Tameside, Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Oldham, Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, Rochdale, Metropolitan Borough of Bury, Bury and City of Salford, Salford. The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort (''castra'') of Mamucium, ''Mamucium'' or ''Mancunium'', established on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers River Medlock, Medlock and River Irwell, Irwell. Throughout the Middle Ages, Manchester remained a ma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Great Western Railway (train Operating Company)
First Greater Western, trading name, trading as Great Western Railway (GWR), is a British train operating company owned by FirstGroup that provides services in the Greater Western franchise, Greater Western franchise area. It manages 197 stations and its trains call at over 270. GWR operates long-distance inter-city services along the Great Western Main Line to and from the West of England and South Wales, inter-city services from London to the West Country via the Reading–Taunton line, and the ''Night Riviera'' Sleeping car, sleeper service between London and Penzance. It provides outer-suburban services in West London; commuter services from its London terminus at to the Thames Valley region, including parts of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire; and regional services throughout the West of England and South Wales to the South coast of England. Great Western Railway also operates the Heathrow Express service. The company began operating in February 1996 as Gre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Keep Wales Tidy
Keep Wales Tidy is a Wales, Welsh national voluntary environmental charity which works towards achieving "a clean, safe and tidy Wales". It works in partnership with Local Authorities, schools and community groups, and organisations such as Waste Awareness Wales and Environment Wales in order to achieve these goals. History ''Keep Wales Tidy'' started as a campaign in 1972, funded by the Welsh Office. At this time it was an offshoot of the charity Keep Britain Tidy. In 2000 Keep Wales Tidy established itself as a separate company, beginning the process of separation from the parent group, and this was completed in 2005. Today there are no formal ties between the two groups, although they often collaborate on common issues. In 2008 the organisation adopted a Fair Trade policy, sourcing items like coffee, tea and biscuits from Fair Trade outlets. Larger items such as staff T-shirts are also Fair Trade sourced. Projects Keep Wales Tidy runs a number of projects, including ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online news coverage. The service has over 5,500 journalists working across its output including in 50 foreign news bureaus where more than 250 foreign correspondents are stationed. Deborah Turness has been the CEO of news and current affairs since September 2022. In 2019, it was reported in an Ofcom report that the BBC spent £136m on news during the period April 2018 to March 2019. BBC News' domestic, global and online news divisions are housed within the largest live newsroom in Europe, in Broadcasting House in central London. Parliamentary coverage is produced and broadcast from studios in London. Through BBC English Regions, th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Travelling Post Office
A Travelling Post Office (TPO) was a type of mail train used in Great Britain and Republic of Ireland, Ireland where the post was sorted en route, used from 1830 to 1996, with non-TPO mail trains ending in 2024. The TPO can be traced back to the earlier days of the railway, the first ever postal movement by rail being performed by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) on 11 November 1830. The Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act 1838 obliged railway companies to carry mail, and thus specialised rolling stock was quickly provided; the first true TPO emerged that same year. Further innovations followed, such as the development of lineside apparatus for picking up and setting down mailbags while underway, and the use of dedicated mail trains. By 1914, there were 126 TPO carriages in operation throughout the United Kingdom, while numerous other nations had adopted the concept, wholly or in part, as well. During the latter part of the twentieth century, rail mail was subject t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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West Wales Line
The West Wales lines () are a group of railway lines from Swansea through Carmarthenshire to Pembrokeshire, West Wales. The main part runs from Swansea to Carmarthen and Whitland, where it becomes three branches to Fishguard, Milford Haven and Pembroke Dock. Before the rail cuts of the 1960s, there were routes to Cardigan, Newcastle Emlyn, Llandysul, and via Lampeter, cross-country from Carmarthen to Aberystwyth. History The railway to west Wales was first projected in 1844, and the proposal was for a line to run from the Great Western Railway near Gloucester to Fishguard, with a branch from Whitland to Pembroke. The railway was called the South Wales Railway, and although it was in theory independent of the GWR, in practice it was very closely linked. This was shown by the fact that Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the engineer, and the line was laid to the broad gauge. Construction began in 1847, but the company ran into financial difficulties. In addition, the Great Famin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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South Wales Main Line
The South Wales Main Line (), originally known as the London, Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway or simply as the Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway, is a branch of the Great Western Main Line in Great Britain. It diverges from the core London-Bristol line at Royal Wootton Bassett beyond Swindon, first calling at Bristol Parkway, after which the line continues through the Severn Tunnel into South Wales. Much of the South Wales Main Line was built between the 1830s and 1886; originally trains to and from destinations in England ran via Chepstow, Gloucester and Stroud, joining the Great Western Main Line at Swindon. A more direct route was challenging yet desirable, leading to the construction of the line's most prominent civil engineering feature, the Severn Tunnel. Completed in 1886, it permitted a significant reduction in journey times between various destinations, especially after the construction of the Badminton Line in 1903. During the British Rail era, th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |