Over 10,000 people have signed a petition calling for the reinstatement of two Welsh railway lines, which will now be considered for debate in the Senedd. The petition

specifically targets the lines connecting Bangor to Afon Wen and Aberystwyth to Carmarthen, which were closed due to the Beeching cuts in the 1960s. It also calls for the integration of these lines with the Cambrian railway and the line from Carmarthen to Cardiff.

The greatest number of signatures came from Ceredigion, followed by Dwyfor Meirionnydd, Carmarthen East/Dinefwr, Preseli Pembrokeshire, and Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire. Members of Ceredigion County Council’s Thriving Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee started the petition after hearing that the Aberystwyth-Carmarthen line would not reopen for at least 30-40 years. The costs for reopening are estimated to range from £800m to £1bn.

A report by the West Wales Rail Campaign group in 2020 confirmed that reopening the Aberystwyth-Carmarthen railway was a realistic prospect, but Professor Stuart Cole CBE, Emeritus Professor of Transport at the University of South Wales, estimated that there was “no chance at all” of it reopening in “the next 40 years”. Photo by Roger Cornfoot, Wikimedia commons.