Note: During most of the period of operation of the BP&GVR the anglicised spellings of Welsh place names were in use, and for consistency are used in this article. The Company's registered name included the incorrect spelling Gwendreath due to an error by parliamentary draftsmen. The Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway (BP&GVR) was a mineral railway company that constructed a railway line in Carmarthenshire, Wales, by conversion of a canal, to connect collieries and limestone pits to the sea at Kidwelly. It extended its network to include Burry Port, Trimsaran and a brickworks at Pwll, later extending to Sandy near Llanelli. For a time the company worked the separate Gwendraeth Valleys Railway. The BP&GVR was notable because of the very low height of some overbridges, a legacy of the canal conversion. It was completely dependent on the economy of the mineral industries it served and due to depression in them, it was for many years in administration. In the final years of the nineteenth century those industries developed considerably and the fortunes of the BP&GVR improved as well, paying 10% dividends for several years, before absorption by the Great Western Railway in 1922. For some time the line carried miners to their place of work, and their families to market, and from 1913 the Company carried the general public in passenger trains. After 1945 mineral extraction in the area declined steeply; passenger operation ceased in 1953, and in the 1960s most of the network closed progressively as pits closed. The final short section at Kidwelly closed in 1998. The canal before the railway Coal had been extracted in the area above Llanelly for centuries, but transport of the heavy mineral to market was difficult. Coastal shipping was essential to the process, although there were limited harbour facilities before the nineteenth century. Getting the coal from the hills to the coast was the problem. About 1768 Thomas Kymer had built a canal to Pwll-y-Llygod, and a waggonway was constructed from the head of the canal there to pits at Carway a mile or so distant. The rails were of timber and the wagon wheels were flanged; it was probably opened in 1769. In 1796 John Curr developed a plateway system, in which flat plates with an upstand for guidance could carry wagons with plain wheels. The Stradey Estate near Llanelly had long been active in mining, and had constructed plateways;