Cambrian Railways
British pre-grouping railway company

The Cambrian Railways owned 230 miles (370 km) of track over a large area of mid Wales. The system was an amalgamation of a number of railways that were incorporated in 1864, 1865 and 1904. The Cambrian connected with two larger railways with connections to the northwest of England via the London and North Western Railway, and the Great Western Railway for connections between London and Wales. The Cambrian Railways amalgamated with the Great Western Railway on 1 January 1922 as a result of the Railways Act 1921. The name is continued today in the route known as the Cambrian Line.
History
Creation of the Cambrian Railways: 1864
The Cambrian Railways Company was created on 25 July 1864 when the Cambrian Railways Act 1864 (27 & 28 Vict. c. cclxii) received royal assent. The company was formed by amalgamating most of the railway companies in mid Wales: the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, the Llanidloes and Newtown Railway, the Newtown and Machynlleth Railway and the Oswestry, Ellesmere and Whitchurch Railway. The shareholders of these constituent companies became the shareholders in the new Cambrian Railways Company.
The public source identifies “Cambrian Railways” as british pre-grouping railway company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cambrian, Railways and British.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1028212. VIAF identifies the subject as 125739726. The Library of Congress control number is nb2005002258. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1864, 1865, 1904 and 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cambrian Railways” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.