Ebbw Vale Parkway was extremely successful for eight years after opening, but numbers fell off a cliff when the line was extended to Ebbw Vale Town and it attracted only 44,000 passengers in the last set of yearly stats, less than one-fifth of what Town managed. It's a strange one as it was completely necessary at the time, since going the whole way was all but impossible until the old steelworks was redeveloped, but its presence on the line feels odd nowadays given the size of some of the places the same line passes through without stopping at (Crumlin, Abercarn and Cwm in particular).