On the rails: To Milford Haven…

A recent visit to Pembrokeshire gave me a chance to take a train journey I’ve never had the opportunity to make previously, just a short hop from Haverfordwest to Milford Haven… 

As I waited I checked progress on RealTimeTrains and found that the train was actually formed from 150230, a unit I have recently travelled on from Shrewsbury to Ruabon! What a coincidence - and it goes to show just how far these aging Sprinters run across the length and breadth of Wales.

Haverfordwest is a two platform affair with a small goods yard but I think the second platform is only used occasionally. The building on platform 1 houses a ticket office, waiting room and a cafe too, not bad for such a distant outpost of the Transport for Wales network.

Our train spent a pleasant 15-20 minutes trundling past the two oil refinery spurs (one abandoned, one still in use) before dropping down to the single track single platform terminus at Milford Haven (which oddly also offers a ticket office in a Portakabin). 

I had not visited Milford Haven for a good twenty years I think and it had changed a lot, the harbour feeing quote gentrified these days, although I expect that is not indicative of the rest of the town. Rails still exist on one small stretch of the quay, otherwise new build flats and shops stretch out around the harbour. 

Our return journey, 2 hours later, was another 150, this time 150280 that would take anyone willing all the way to Cardiff.

My little trip ended with the stop at Haverfordwest again though, and another one of the extremities of Wales’s rail network now ticked off (mind it was 27 years ago when I did the Pembroke Dock branch). A few more to go, and something to more carefully plan another day. Until next time, more soon…

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