an act of parliament to authorise the canal was obtained in march 1793, and allowed either the company or owners of collieries to build tramroads from the canal to points up to from it. although no work on the canal had started, the company began building the clydach tramway, with dadford as engineer. it used edge rails, like modern railways, which were laid on iron sleepers initially, but then on wooden sleepers. it is difficult to be certain which sections dadford was responsible for, with hadfield describing a tramroad from gelli-felen colliery to gilwern, which then crossed the river usk to reach glanrwyney, where iron from ebbw vale was worked in a forge skempton describes a tramroad from llangroiney to gellifelen, and a second section from gellifelen to fossalog, near nantyglo, while gladwin and gladwin describe a route from llammarch colliery to clydach ironworks. dadford's bridge over the usk collapsed in february 1795, when the river was in flood, and the fact that he had not built flood relief culverts into the embankments on either side of the bridge was deemed to have been a contributory factor in its failure.