Cardiff Central railway station

In the early 1840s the South Wales Railway was trying to find a suitable site for a railway station, but the area that is now Cardiff Central railway station was prone to flooding. It was Isambard Kingdom Brunel's solution to divert the River Taff to the west, creating a larger and safer site for the station.[2] The initial part of the South Wales Railway between Chepstow and Swansea through Cardiff was opened on 18 June 1850, with all trains operated by the Great Western Railway (GWR) under a lease agreement.[3] Through services from Cardiff to London Paddington began on 19 July 1852, when the Chepstow Railway Bridge was opened, completing the connection between the South Wales Railway and the Great Western Railway. The South Wales Railway was absorbed into the GWR in 1863.[4]

The South Wales Railway had originally been built as a broad-gauge railway, but on the weekend of 11–12 May 1872, the entire South Wales system was converted to standard gauge.[4]

Cardiff to London trains originally ran via the circuitous route via Gloucester and took an average of five hours. This was reduced to around four hours from 1886 when the Severn Tunnel was opened creating a shorter route via Bristol and Bath. In 1903 another shortcut, the Badminton railway line was opened, bypassing Bath and Bristol, and this reduced the Cardiff-London journey times by another hour. By the 1930s, the fastest Cardiff-London trains took around 2 hours 40 minutes, and this remained fairly static until 1961, when the diesel Blue Pullman service reduced the fastest journey time to 2 hours 7 minutes. In October 1976 the current InterCity 125 service was introduced, reducing the fastest journey times to 1 hour 53 minutes.[5]

The original 'Cardiff' station as it was then known had four through tracks running through the site, and consisted of two through platforms each with its own bay platform. During the 1890s the station underwent considerable expansion, in 1896 a flying junction was constructed connecting the station to nearby Cardiff Queen Street station, and extra platforms were added to accommodate the new Taff Vale services, bringing the total number up to six.[6]

Initially named Cardiff, the station was renamed Cardiff General in July 1924 and then Cardiff Central by British Rail in May 1973.[7][8]

Exterior of main building

Between 1931 and 1934, the station underwent a major rebuild, designed by the GWR's architects department under their chief architect Percy Emerson Culverhouse, the centrepiece of this was a new Art Deco entrance building faced in Portland stone, containing a booking hall and concourse with noted Art Deco light fittings, all topped by a clock cupola.[9] The current Art Deco lamps in the booking hall are replicas of the originals, installed in 1999, having been funded by the Railway Heritage Trust. A GWR war memorial is located at the eastern end of the concourse.[10]

The interior of the concourse

The Great Western Railway has its full name carved onto the façade (larger than the name of the station). The rebuild also saw a number of other improvements including the lengthening of the platforms, the widening of the Taff River railway bridge to allow the approach lines to the station to be quadrupled, and the installation of colour-light signalling. The rebuild of the station cost the GWR £820,000 (equivalent to £58,640,000 in 2019),[11], and was formally opened by the then Minister of Transport Oliver Stanley on 26 February 1934.[6]

In July 1934, the GWR began a pioneering diesel railcar service with a buffet between Cardiff General and Birmingham Snow Hill which had only two stops at Newport and Gloucester. This was the first long distance diesel express service in Britain, covering the 117.5 miles (189.1 km) between Cardiff and Birmingham in 2 hours 20 minutes. It proved so successful that larger railcars with more seating and no buffet had to be introduced to cope with demand, and even this had to be augmented by a normal locomotive hauled service. During the Second World War, two such trains ran to and from Cardiff daily. At this time it consisted of a three car train consisting of a standard carriage sandwiched between two railcars, and a stop at Stratford-upon-Avon was introduced.[12][13][14][15]

As a result of representations by the GWR, a nearby working-class district, Temperance Town, was cleared during the late 1930s in order to improve the outlook of the rebuilt station.[16]

In 1992, the station, its buildings and platforms, became Grade II listed.[17]

Cardiff Riverside railway station in 1993, shortly before demolition.

On 14 August 1893 the GWR opened the adjacent Cardiff Riverside station which had two platforms located to the south of and adjacent to the main Cardiff station which curved away to the south on the Cardiff Riverside Branch, which ran to its terminus at Clarence Road about one mile to the south. Riverside station was rebuilt as an island platform with two platform faces in the early 1930s at the same time as Cardiff General was being rebuilt. On 28 October 1940 Riverside station was formally incorporated into Cardiff General station with its platforms being designated 8 and 9. The Riverside platforms were closed for passenger use on 16 March 1964, but they continued to be used for parcels and newspaper traffic for a number of years after.[6] They were demolished in 1994 after becoming disused.[18][10]

In June 2010, Network Rail began its £5 billion Great Western electrification project which promised the construction of overhead line equipment, station improvements, and resignalling along parts of the Great Western Main Line and the South Wales Main Line. The changes would see the retirement of InterCity 125 trains on London services, and the introduction of Hitachi-designed British Rail Class 800 electric trains, under a side project named the Intercity Express Programme.

Plans to install overhead equipment as far as Swansea were withdrawn in 2017 when the Department for Transport announced it would no longer fund the Cardiff-Swansea project, instead ordering bi-mode trains which switch to diesel when departing Cardiff for west Wales.[19] Electrification to Cardiff was to be completed by 2018, but late that year Network Rail announced that completion would be delayed a further year.[20]

The first electric services began at Cardiff Central on 5 January 2020, starting with a single 5-car Class 800 forming the 08:50 Cardiff to London. As of January 2020, trains have remained unable to operate on electric power through the Severn Tunnel.[21] This has been attributed to difficult operating conditions in the 133-year-old tunnel.[22]

The new southern entrance and booking hall, opened in 2015

In 2011 it was announced that Cardiff Central would be enhanced with a new platform ('Platform 8') and a new two-storey southern entrance and booking hall. This was part of a £200m regeneration scheme to boost train capacity in Cardiff and the surrounding areas. With work planned to start from June 2014, the Assembly Government committed £7m for the overall programme.[23]

The old Grade II listed Water Tower (next to Platform 0 and the River Taff) was repainted in 2012 in the original brown and beige colours of the Great Western Railway.[24]

The new entrance on the south side of the station, was opened in September 2015,[25] and the new platform 8 on the south side of the station, opened in January 2017, allowing the number of trains on the busy Cardiff Central to Cardiff Queen Street corridor to be increased from 12 to 16 per hour. This was opened in conjunction with a resignalling scheme in the station, which saw all of the station's platforms signalled to become bi-directional, in order to increase the flexibility of the operations.[26][27]

A major redevelopment scheme began in 2015 of Central Square in front of the main station entrance, of which Network Rail owned part. 500,000 square feet of new office space were planned for the area formerly occupied by Cardiff Central bus station. The landscaping, designed to create a positive impression to visitors exiting the railway station, would include a major pedestrianised route between the railway station and the Millennium Stadium.[28]

In 2015, plans were unveiled to substantially redevelop the station in order to cope with the expected rise in passenger numbers, which are projected to rise from the current 13 million to 32 million by 2043.[29] The proposed redevelopment would see an enlarged glass fronted concourse which would leave the current 1930s façade intact.[30]

It was announced in July 2019 that significant upgrades would take place at Cardiff Central under a £38m improvement project, which also proposes a £20m West Wales Parkway station north of Swansea in order to reduce journey times between Cardiff and West Wales.[29]