Railways and Industry in the Tondu Valleys: Ogmore, Garw and Porthcawl Branches

About John HodgeStuart Davies

The book has been produced jointly by John Hodge and Stuart Davies. John Hodge is well known for his series on the South Wales Main Line and North & West and for other books and articles on South Wales and GWR railway matters. He is also an established railway photographer with a huge archive of South Wales material. Following graduation he joined British Railways in the Cardiff District Office in 1961 and as a member of the Divisional Office took a leading role in the replanning of all freight services in South Wales in 1970 and was project officer for the development of the first Freightliner Depot in South Wales in 1967. He became long term Coal & Oil long term planning assistant at Paddington in 1971 and joined the WR Consultancy Team in 1976 moving to the Railways Board in 1980 where he worked on various national operating schemes. He retired in 1992 when he took up writing articles and then books. Stuart Davies is a native of the Ogmore Valley and spent much of his formative years observing the operations at Tondu depot and its associated railway environs. This inspired him to pursue a railway career based initially in South Wales then Carlisle Bristol East Anglia and the West Midlands finally becoming a Senior Operations Executive. On the privatisation of British Railways he participated in a number of successful bids for train operating companies. Recording in detail the railway activities around the Tondu Valleys has been a long-held ambition now realised in this work.+.