Coleford, Monmouth, Usk and Pontypool Railway

On 2 January 1854 the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway opened its main line. It was a north–south trunk route from Hereford, in fact connecting with the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company near Pontypool for the final approach to Newport. It was observed that an extensive and productive agricultural region lay nearby, east of the NA&HR route and the idea formed that a line from Monmouth through Raglan and Usk would be advantageous.

Building on that notion, attention was drawn to Coleford, considered one of the most important mineral-producing locations in the Forest of Dean. A railway line connecting Coleford through Monmouth to Pontypool would be able to convey iron ore and coal to the smelters of South Wales, specifically to Nantyglo. The ironmaster Crawshay Bailey was a prime mover in bringing the idea to fruition; it took shape as the Coleford, Monmouth, Usk and Pontypool Railway.

The proposed railway would, it was claimed, offer the most direct route for the lucrative coal traffic between South Wales and London. The line could form a junction with the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway near Little Mill, two miles north of Pontypool Road station.

Coleford already had a railway connection: the Monmouth Railway had joined it to some scattered pits to the east of the town, and connected to a terminus at May Hill, near Monmouth. However the Monmouth Railway was a 3ft 6in gauge horse-operated plateway, and by the 1850s it was technologically obsolescent and commercially moribund. The new railway would acquire the Coleford Railway and use some of the trackbed for its own new line.

Train service

For many years the train service had consisted of four or five passenger trains each way; generally these ran through from Ross to Pontypool Road.

After 1918 the GWR introduced auto-trains on the line, and through running across Monmouth was largely discontinued. A Sunday service was introduced by 1938. Although May Hill station at Monmouth was recognised as being much more convenient for the town centre, trains from Pontypool Road to Monmouth did not continue to that point, even though auto-trains could easily have reversed there and returned to Troy. (After nationalisation some services made this move for schoolchildren.) One, or later two, goods trains daily sufficed on the line, and there was comparatively little long-distance traffic.

Royal Ordnance Factory Glascoed

As part of the country's preparation for war, in 1938 a Royal Ordnance Factory was established at Glascoed, between Little Mill and Usk. Construction workers were conveyed to the location by railway, and it opened as ROF Glascoed on 6 October 1940.