at the grand opening of abergavenny railway station 2nd january 1854

horsemouth has gone down a strange youtube rabbit hole. he is either following people walking the appalachian trail (rob the  nomad)  or hiding out in the woods being homeless (er. rob the nomad) or people making their cars warmer for sleeping in in winter. the advantage of walking the appalachian trail seems to be that you have a reason for being there (and are thus not homeless). 

horsemouth has been doing some planning out of the road to the insulation of the communal endeavour - counting up the houses, the flats in houses in the program and the people who live in them (half the co-op), counting the flats not in the program and the members living in them (a quarter of the co-op), counting the members in short-life (a further quarter of the co-op) not in the program.  his maoist slogan is all owned properties at EPC C or better by 2030! (which is good because it is what the government require of them by law). 

when horsemouth comes to look back over the years he sees that the results of his efforts to get more people housed long term (and thus bring more financial stability to the co-op) have been paltry in comparison with the amount of effort necessary to achieve them . he realises this is the kind of topic that just makes him grumpy and is not good to think about just before bed-time.  

frankly after 20 years of working with his fellow members of the communal endeavour  homelessness is starting to look very appealing.  (mind you, looking out of the window at the rain, less so). 

thus horsemouth has decided to abandon housing and take up historic train-spotting instead. 

it's 2nd january 1854 abergavenny station opens as part of the newport, abergavenny and hereford railway (NA&HR), and horsemouth is right there. the station opens under the name abergavenny monmouth road. (abergavenny itself had 3 railway stations at one point - abergavenny brecon road, abergavenny junction and abergavenny monmouth road.)

(the station itself is grade II listed now and was designed by charles liddell).  

after abergavenny on the line  there were the stations at llanvihangel, pandy, pontrilas (a spur up the golden valley railway to hay constructed 1889, article here), st. devreux, tram inn, hereford barton, and hereford barrs court (with a spur off along the hereford, hay and brecon railway (as used by kilvert) to hay constructed 1864), all opening that same day. 

as you can judge all these railway stations would be very useful to modern-day horsemouth were they still in existence (of all these stations only abergavenny and hereford are still in existence) and to be frank, that's not even the half of it for victorian railway activity in the area). 

today lots of rain. later this afternoon (2pm) strong winds forecast. horsemouth does hope it doesn't bring down the half-felled silver birch up on the common or that, if it falls, it doesn't take out the fence while the sheep are visiting.