Closures
Passenger services to Blaenavon High Level and Brynmawr over the GWR/LNWR Talywain branch ceased in May 1941, ostensibly as a wartime economy, but the services never resumed after the end of hostilities. The passenger service to Blaenavon Low Level closed in April 1962, which was actually a year prior to the publication of the notorious Beeching Report. It was later disclosed that the opening of the new Llanwern steelworks had caused severe rail congestion in the Newport area and as a result the British Transport Commission had recommended the closure of a number of passenger services in the Monmouthshire area as an operational measure.
The line from Newport to Cwmbran closed on 27 October 1963, with traffic being switched to the Pontypool, Caerleon and Newport Railway route. The rundown in the local mining industry and the closure of a local brickworks also led to the closure of the Blaensychan and Tirpentwys lines in 1962 and 1967 respectively, and when, on 3 May 1980 the Big Pit closed, the remainder of the railway line closed with it.
A number of rail enthusiast passenger specials ran between 1968 and 1981, but as the track from Trevethin Junction to Blaenavon Low level had been lifted in the 1960s they had followed the route of the High Level line. The line was severed in the summer of 1982 when a double-decker bus ferrying day-trip passengers on a route normally only used by single-deck buses, crashed into a low bridge near Pontnewydd. Five people were killed and the bridge was demolished almost immediately afterwards.
In the summer of 1983 the remainder of the track was lifted except for a section of the northern extension of the line which is in preservation as the Pontypool and Blaenavon Railway.
Sections of the line through Cwmbran have been used as the route for the A4051 road, known as Cwmbran Drive.
Read more about this topic: Monmouthshire Railway And Canal Company