WALES’ QUIETEST STATION
SUGAR LOAF Halt in Powys, at the heart of the Heart of Wales line, has been declared the quietest station in the principality with just 150 people per annum boarding trains there. The halt was built in 1868 to accommodate a small number of railway workers’ cottages, taking their children to school in Llanwrtyd. The station is cut into the rock and is reached via a gravel path off the A483. It closed in 1965 but reopened in 1984, primarily for walkers and cyclists heading to the nearby Sugar Loaf hill, which is not to be confused with the more famous Sugar Loaf mountain in Monmouthshire.
As well as being Wales’ least-used, it is also the fourth least-used station in the UK. It has now been equipped with a weather-protected visitors’ book, although with 3,500 spaces it could take a quarter century or more to fill.
Sugar Loaf Halt features in the book Tiny Stations by Dixe Wills, who also worked with Paul Merton on his Channel 4 series Secret Stations last year, which saw the actor and comedian visit a number of small request stop stations around the UK, including some on the Heart of Wales line and in Carmarthenshire.
Sugar Loaf has eight trains passing through Monday to Saturday,…
