Furnace Sidings Station

This the main station on the Blaenavon and Pontypool Railway: Furnace Sidings Station. Abergavenny Walking for Health group walked through here this morning on our way to Garn Lakes. This whole area was mined for coal and excavated for iron ore until Big Pit, the last working pit in the area, closed in 1980 (you can see the top of the pithead winding tower in yesterday's blip). Big Pit is now a museum, and you can descend into the bowels of the earth and see the conditions miners had to work in. There were railways running up and down most of the South Wales valleys, and the Blaenavon and Pontypool line is 2 miles of track around Blaenavon that has been made operational by enthusiasts and runs trains in the summer months.

The bridge is painted in maroon and cream, a livery I'd associated with my childhood, when we lived overlooking a GWR (Great Western Region) station, and is very nostalgic. Except that I now discover that the GWR livery was chocolate brown and cream, not maroon. Memory plays tricks!