This tramroad was the inspiration of an Englishman, John Christie, a London indigo merchant who had made a fortune in India. In 1819, he purchased a sizable chunk of what is now the Brecon Beacons National Park, put up for sale by the Crown to pay for the Napoleonic Wars. Christie's motives were overtly philanthropic - he hoped to make 'improvements of special benefit to the country at large', although behind this facade was no doubt an urge to establish himself as a local squire with a grand house and attendant manorial rights.

His aim was to move agricultural products, limestone and coal but he was handicapped from the start by the fact that the route climbed to a height of 426m (1,400ft). What Christie did not find anywhere near the line of the railway were the supplies of coal needed to burn the lime. He sat about rethinking the line, and abandoned three schemes before he hit upon the new, better idea of linking whole network with the busy port of Swansea via the Swansea canal. He bought sailing ships and canal boats, extended his line and went bankrupt in 1827. The railway had cost £40,000 to build, and was only worth £25,000 at his bankruptcy.

His estates and tramway were taken over by his creditors, who valiantly tried to make the scheme work by extending the line south to connect with ironworks. By 1837 it had been discovered that the local anthracite coal could be used in iron-smelting and there was a short-lived boom in anthracite ironworks, but, yet again, the tramway network was in the wrong place to do more than benefit mildly from the new demand. During the railway mania of the 1840s the system staggered on, depending on a mixture of local foundry trade, some iron and coal work and the occasional passenger traffic. Various new and wildly idealistic schemes, such as the Banwen railway, came to little, and the scheme petered out in the 1860s.

Its remains have largely disappeared, sometimes buried beneath the subsequent railway or the roads, but there is sufficient remaining to reward a careful search. (see below)