ten condensing tank engines purchased second hand from the Mersey Railway, which was electrifying its system. The condensing apparatus was removed in due course, and they were fitted with cabs in place of the weatherboards. Hopwood, writing in 1919, said that the company possessed 35 locomotives, all tank engines; there were 19 of the 0-6-0 type, seven 2-6-2s, three 0-6-4s and 3 0-6-2s, an 0-4-2 and two 0-4-0s. A locomotive passing into GWR ownership at the end of 1922 was originally a double-framed 0-6-0 built for the Metropolitan Railway. It had been sold to the Alexandra in 1880, and was converted to an 0-6-2 in 1921. It was withdrawn by the GWR in 1926. Passenger services The PC&NR had wished to operate passenger trains in to Newport High Street, the GWR station, in 1883, but the GWR had refused the facility. Relations had eased somewhat by 1887 and the Alexandra company operated a passenger service between Pontypridd and Newport High Street, over the PC&NR which was still nominally independent. The Great Western Railway itself took over this service from 1 January 1899. From that date the Alexandra Company operated no passenger services at Newport, its home location. In the first decade of the twentieth century, attention was given to ways in which local passenger services might be operated at lower cost in thinly populated areas. The Alexandra Company acquired a railmotor, a single coach vehicle with a small integrated locomotive, and it started a service between Caerphilly and Pontypridd, Tram Road Halt. The last named was just short of the junction with the Taff Vale Railway at Pontypridd, so avoiding paying toll charges to that company. Most of the intermediate stopping places were newly installed, of the lightest possible construction, the arrangement being that the railmotor had fixed steps to allow passengers to board and alight at ground level. The service was extended to run from Machen to Tram Road Halt later, and a second railmotor was purchased. Semmens observes that even with the imminent grouping, and thence amalgamation of the Alexandra Company with the GWR, the railmotor service "still did not run into the main station at Pontypridd." Road passenger services Also in the first decade of the twentieth century the Alexandra Company operated motor omnibus services within Newport Borough; it had the powers to do so as long as they did not compete with any municipal passenger tram