The Oystermouth Railway, later known as the Swansea & Mumbles Railway, was the world’s first railway to carry fare-paying passengers. Originally built in 1804 to transport limestone from the quarries of Mumbles to Swansea and to the markets beyond, the railway began transporting people on March 25, 1807.

It was Benjamin French who introduced the world’s first passenger railway by converting an iron carriage to be fit for transporting people and began to advertise this new found service after agreeing to pay the owners £20 a year for its use.

The carriages were originally horse drawn, with steam traction and electric tramcars introduced in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively.

Now dismantled, the route of the railway survives as a cycleway around west Swansea Bay. More information is available at Historic Newspapers and at Engineering Timelines, as well as in Phil Carradice’s article.

You may find the following articles interesting:

Additionally, you may also be interested in the film below.

 

And why not take a trip down memory lane and hop on board the Mumbles train in 1946 here?

If you are keen on vising the area, check out the webpages of Mumbles  and Swansea, as well as Britain’s top 10…places in Wales.

Another panoramic view, this time of the promenade at Oystermouth, part of the Wales Coast Path, a public pathway of 882 miles or 1419 kilometres around the whole coast of Wales, is available here.