Where I Go in My Dreams (part 22)

In which The Author is nocturnally trainspotting

For once, these recurring dream locations have a basis in reality. It's very unusual for me to dream about Trecynon, despite the fact that I lived there until I was eighteen, and have lived there for the last twenty years. However, just because I'm dreaming about Trecynon, that doesn't mean my dreams are anything like the real world.

The railway line between Aberdare and Hirwaun hasn't seen a passenger train since June 1964. There were, until fairly recently, freight services from the coal washery close to Tower Colliery. Tower (near the railhead), the Phurnacite plant, and the pits further south were the reason the line wasn't torn up when passenger services ended. Our valley, in common with others, could have gone into the current millennium with only shitty bus services to get people to Pontypridd and Cardiff.

I was walking home after a late Saturday night in Aberdare about thirty years ago when I chanced upon an odd train at the level crossing at the northern end of Robertstown. Topped and tailed by a Class 20 locomotive, it consisted of a couple of tanker-style wagons and what seemed to be a converted passenger carriage. Intrigued, I bought a copy of Rail magazine a couple of days later, to help me solve the mystery. It was one of a pair, which used to travel the length and breadth of the network spraying weedkiller on the tracks and into the undergrowth on either side.

Now there's no traffic on the line at all. I won't hold my breath for the reintroduction of passenger services when the South Wales Metro finally sees the light of day.

But in my dreams it's a different story entirely.

On several occasions I've dreamed of unexplained freight services – often only one or two wagons, with small diesel locos on motive power duty – which make their way from the level crossing and past the cables factory (Prysmain) at a fair speed. I'm usually in a good position to see them shoot past; I tend to be standing on the edge of the waste ground where Prospect Place used to be, tucked away at the end of Gadlys Uchaf. They always seem to be heading away from Aberdare, but no matter how long I stay there I never see anything come the other way.

The other old railway line which features in some recurring dreams vanished long before I was born. There used to be a complex layout of lines in the Cwm and the Dare Valley (the present-day Dare Valley Country Park). After crossing the river Dare on a viaduct, the stone pillars of which are still extant, one branch ran along the western edge of Aberdare Park. It's now a footpath running from Landare, outside the park railings, to the west end of Park Lane. It continued behind Cemetery Road – more or less through the present Cledwyn Gardens – before crossing Hirwaun Road near Station Place. There's a remnant of the level crossing gates near the main entrance to Aberdare Cemetery. This branch line joined the main line at Gelli Tarw Junction, near Penywaun. It's still possible to walk along the old trackbed as far as the A4059 just below Dawkins Place, but it's not a great short cut in wet weather.

Anyway, in my dreams this branch line is still in use, but not by steam trains. A few times I've dreamed of being in Aberdare Park and seeing a Class 37 diesel locomotive in the old blue livery making its way south behind the railways. I'm never sure what it's transporting, as the wagons are hidden behind the shrubs which line the perimeter of the park. But when it gets to the top of Glan Road, it somehow veers left and continues along the street. Once I tried following it, and it headed down Tudor Terrace towards the real railway line.

I haven't had this second dream for a while, but the mysterious freight services on the Hirwaun line still pop up now and then.