A tourist railway in South Wales is having to use coal from Russia for its steam engines, rather than from a coal mine three miles away.

The narrow gauge Brecon Mountain Railway (BMR) has fallen foul of regulations governing the transport of coal from the Ffos-y-Fran opencast mine in Merthyr Tydfil, the planning permission for which stipulated - following concerns about noise and dust by local residents - that its output had to be moved by rail rather than road. Since there is no rail link between the BMR and the mine, narrow gauge or otherwise, the tourist line has had to source its coal from 3,000 miles (4,828 km) away in Siberia.

Jayne Hills, the tourist railway's owner, said the regulations were particularly annoying as the local coal would be ideal for use in one of their steam locomotives, which has just been converted from running on oil. She added: "It seems ludicrous that we could get coal from three miles away but instead are being forced to import it from Russia. I dread to think what the carbon footprint must be like of moving that coal but we have no choice."

The mine produces up to 20,000 tonnes (19,684 tons) of coal a week, with most of it going to Aberthaw power station in the Vale of Glamorgan. Miller Argent, the mine's operator, are now applying to change the planning conditions so that five per cent of its output can be removed by lorry. The BMR opened in 1980 and runs for 3.5 miles (5.6km) through the Brecon Beacons National Park along the length of the Taf Fechan Reservoir.

Picture courtesy Stuart Yeates