Great Western Coffee Shop

Passenger services resumed today between Newport and the Ebbw Vale line, bringing Gaer Jn - Park Junction back in to regular passenger use. Today's services ran Cardiff-Newport-Ebbw Vale, but on weekdays the service runs Newport-Crosskeys only, complementing the existing Cardiff-Ebbw Vale service.

The services don't connect; presumably due to the much-pruned infrastructure, which is mostly single-track. In due course the service is intended to be extended to Ebbw Vale. Maybe someone can report on how the infrastructure for that is progressing?

Good to see those services starting.  And I can (from what I have read and understood) confirm your presumption; "they" know the connection is awful (though better than the one SWR from Waterloo offer to passengers onwards via Warminster at Salisbury now) but there is just a thin single line north of Crosskeys at present, and just a loop there where trains can pass with no third platform to hold the short Newport workings during that passing of the Cardiff - Ebbw Vale services.

The TFW site is very considerate though: for connections it states 'Please note there is a xx minute wait between trains' where 'xx' might be 11 to 24 minutes for those services.

Having to fess up to 59 minutes like a certain other TOC, courtesy of the DfT, would be an embarrassment.

Mark

If anyone's looking for a 5 mile mostly off-road walk, followed by a return to your start by rail, you can do worse than start at Newport Station, look out the old canal towpath (it's not intuitive as to where you find it, mind...). Once you've picked it up, head, eventually, for Rogerstone.

At the start, you'll find a canal tunnel with only one end (the other end vanished behind concrete). Later, you'll pass Allt yr ynn - where a poet allegedly wrote a very well known poem as well as one less well known one. It isn't quite the setting that it was, as the lock there is now alongside the M4. Then, you'll pass a major flight of locks, after which the canal, more or less nailed to a hillside, takes you onward to pass within about a mile of Rogerstone Station. Dig out the likes of OpenStreetMap for this bit, as there's a couple of footpaths that cut the hike from the towpath to the station.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=rogerstone#map=17/51.59713/-3.06300

And carry on along the towpath to Crosskeys if you can - it's a delight, a true 'Little Switzerland'. Perhaps the most unexpectedly pretty unnavigable canal I've ever traipsed.

Same canal but different stretch, after a day walking the navigable canal from Abergavenney/Llanfoist to Pontypool, I decided to follow it up a bit later by tracing the remaining, largely unnavigable section from Pontypool to Newport.
Most of it is fairly easy to follow and the course is largely intact.  Some bits, such as the flight of locks south of Cwmbran have been remarkably well restored and preserved for, I gather, future restoration of the canal in general.
The Monmouthshire and Brecon has a bit off an attachment for me as our old school had an activity and outward bound centre converted from the old Govilon railway station close to the canal with dormitories, kitchen, communal area etc.  It's a private residence these days but the walls could tell some stories!