Mitcheldean Road & Forest of Dean Junction Railway Mitcheldean Road & Forest of Dean Junction Railway The Mitcheldean Road and Forest of Dean Junction Railway was an independent railway company incorporated in 1871, to provide a northerly outlet for iron ore and coal products from the Cinderford and Whimsey area in the Forest of Dean, to the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway line; mineral traffic to industrial centres in South Wales and the Midlands was foreseen. The company ran out of money during construction, and the Great Western Railway purchased it and completed the line about 1882. By then the intended mineral flows were being adequately handled on
Forest of Dean Coalfield of ownership and history, allowing the unique privilege to continue intact. The last of the big gales closed in 1965 and today only a handful of small collieries are still operating. The Forest of Dean Coalfield formed during Upper Carboniferous times, when the area was a nearshore-intertidal environment of semi-marine estuaries and swamps. The area today is a raised basin plateau of Paleozoic rocks folded in the Variscan Orogeny. It occurs in a raised asymmetrical syncline with a steeper eastern limb that surfaces in the area of Staple Edge and the Soudley Valley producing the steeply dipping strata. An unusual