In 1804 the British Parliament approved the laying of a railway line between
Swansea and
Oystermouth in
South Wales, for transportation of quarried materials to and from the
Swansea Canal and the harbour at the mouth of the
River Tawe and in the autumn of that year the first tracks were laid. At this stage, the railway was known as the
Oystermouth Railway and controlled by the Committee of the Company of Proprietors of the Oystermouth Railway or Tramroad Company, which included many prominent citizens of Swansea, including the copper and coal magnate John Morris (later
Sir John Morris, Bart.). In later years it became known as the
Swansea and Mumbles Railway. There was no road link between Swansea and Oystermouth at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the original purpose of the railway was to transport
coal,
iron ore and
limestone. Construction seems to have been completed in 1806 and operations began without formal ceremony, using
horse-drawn vehicles. As constructed, the line ran from the Brewery Bank adjacent to the
Swansea Canal in Swansea, around the wide sweep of Swansea Bay to a terminus at Castle Hill (near the present-day Clements Quarry) in the tiny isolated fishing village of Oystermouth. In February 1807, approval was given to carry passengers along the line, when one of the original proprietors, Benjamin French, offered to pay the company the sum of twenty pounds in lieu of tolls for the right to do so for twelve months from 25 March 1807. This is usually cited as the date when the first regular service carrying passengers between Swansea and Oystermouth began, thus giving the railway the claim of being the first passenger railway in the world. Passenger services operated from The Mount, the world's first recorded
railway station. ==References==