Step off the train at Burry Port and the first thing you’ll see is a plate of chips, a 99 and a seagull with designs on both.
They’re on the first of five graffiti-style panels along the station wall, each carrying one word of a Welsh phrase: “Pob stop yw dechrau newydd”, every stop is a new beginning.
Read along and you pass the playground, mountain bikers in Pembrey Forest, the racing circuit, the airfield, the harbour from above, the church, and a steam engine and its crew next to a Transport for Wales train.
On the platforms, two bigger murals say “Welcome to Burry Port” and “Welcome to Pembrey” in seaside-postcard style, with the lighthouse, poppies, a robin, and a small red aeroplane beside the date 1928.
The date every Burry Port child knows
That was the June morning Amelia Earhart’s plane landed in the estuary off the town, making her the first woman to fly the Atlantic. The centenary is two years away and the panels are getting in early, according to South West Wales Connected, the community rail partnership that commissioned them.
The murals also feature Glynis Johns, the Mary Poppins actress the partnership says has links to the town, and a man it names only as Emyr.
Emyr sold the last Edmondson ticket at the station, the partnership says: the little card tickets railways used for over a century before print-outs and phones. He came to the design workshops to talk about his railway days.
“Something everyone can feel connected to”
The panels were designed after workshops with schools, community groups and residents, the partnership says, and then produced and fitted by signmakers ONER Signs.
Transport for Wales paid for most of it, with a contribution from Great Western Railway.
The station hasn’t always been in the news for good reasons. In May 2021 around 100 drunk youths gathered there, a fight broke out on the train to Llanelli and two police officers were assaulted.
The partnership says the artwork is meant partly to “help deter anti-social behaviour through community ownership of space”, as well as to make the station more welcoming.
Eve Sherratt, its community rail officer, said: “This project isn’t just about enhancing the station, it’s about celebrating the people, heritage and creativity that make this area so special. By involving the community from the very beginning, we’re ensuring the results are something everyone can feel connected to and proud of.”
Robyn Jones, customer manager at Network Rail Wales and Borders, said the installation “further enhances what is already one of West Wales’s hidden gems”.
South West Wales Connected is one of more than 75 community rail partnerships in Britain, and is hosted by 4theRegion, the Swansea-based not-for-profit.
A train every half hour, if the money comes
The station is also first in line for the Swansea Bay Metro. Phase A of Transport for Wales’s plan is a new station at Cockett and a train every half hour between Swansea and Burry Port, run from a new Platform 0 at Swansea.
It is the one Metro scheme with paperwork moving: costed at under £50 million, its business case went to the Welsh Government last month. What it doesn’t have is money. Neither the Metro nor St Clears station won anything in the 2025 Spending Review, TfW told councillors in July, and the next one isn’t until 2027.
For now, Burry Port’s new beginning is the wall. The trains stay hourly.
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