Port Talbot Parkway railway station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Port Talbot Parkway

Location

Place

Port Talbot

Local authority

Neath Port Talbot

Operations

Station code

PTA

Managed by

Arriva Trains Wales

Platforms in use

Live departures and station information from National Rail

Annual Rail Passenger Usage

2004/05 *

0.290 million

2005/06 *

0.301 million

National Rail - UK railway stations

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

* Annual passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Port Talbot Parkway from Office of Rail Regulation statistics.

UK Railways Portal

Port Talbot Parkway railway station is a railway station in Port Talbot, Wales. The station is located at street level near Station Road in Port Talbot town centre.

It was opened by the Great Western Railway as Port Talbot General, later becoming known as just Port Talbot (probably at the time it was rebuilt in the late 1960's or early 1970's to an island type station).

While it now bears the title Parkway, it is not a Parkway station per se. It was named Parkway in the 1980's when the old goods shed and yard were converted to a large car park to encourage patronage of eastbound commuters from the Neath and Swansea Valley areas. The idea being that overall travel time could be saved by catching the train at Port Talbot instead of Neath or Swansea because of the low line speed west of Port Talbot and the limited parking at the other two stations.

There were originally two stations near to the current site, one of which was Aberafan Town, which was on the old Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway route and the other being the nearby terminus of the Port Talbot Railway named Port Talbot Central.

[edit] Facilities

The station is of the island type and has 2 platforms:

Platform 1, for westbound trains towards Swansea and West Wales.
Platform 2, for eastbound trains towards Cardiff Central, Newport, London Paddington and Manchester Piccadilly