Wrexham & Ellesmere Railway

The Wrexham & Ellesmere line was opened in 1895 and was worked by Cambrian Railway and, for a few years at least, this single-track branch formed part of a tenuous cross-country link between Manchester and Liverpool and the districts served by the Cambrian system. The 1922-1923 Grouping ensured that the line passed into Great Western hands and it treated the route as an ordinary country branch line - in the 1920s and 1930s this 12-mile single track route would have been very similar to scores of other rural lines. In the Second World War the route carried extra traffic to and from a large ordnance factory that had been established at Marchwiel, and in post-war years the site became an industrial estate that continued to provide freight traffic for the railway. Sadly, the Wrexham & Ellesmere line did not survive the anti-railway purges of the 1960s, and its passenger services were withdrawn in 1962. Freight traffic continued to operate over the northern end of the line until the 1980s.