A horse-worked railway constructed to the newly built Swansea Canal in 1797 in order to exploit the coal and iron-ore reserves of Cwm Twrch. Much of the formation survives as the carefully graded road through Cwm Twrch, traffic descended from the mines to the canal by gravity and horses pulled the waggons back up. The line was engineered by Edward Martin and the west end of the 4.16 kilometre main line was originally at SN 7565 1260. The railway with its multiple branches was eventually 14.71 km long although not all branches would have operated simultaneously. The original line was probably an edge-railway until c.1805, was then converted to a plateway or tramroad and then back to a (standard-gauge) edge railway in 1851. In 1864 this was replaced by a more heavily engineered locomotive railway branch of the Swansea Vale Railway which closed in the 1960s. The original Palleg Railway and its branches were built under the terms of the Swansea Canal Act and was therefore a public railway open to use at the current Swansea Canal toll rate. (Stephen Hughes, 15.03.2007).