Brymbo railway branch lines
The Great Western Railway became dominant, but a rival company built a competing line and branches.
Brymbo was surrounded by a maze of duplicating branch lines serving pits and quarries and a passenger service was started on some routes.
The coal and associated iron industries became active from the early-eighteenth century, but poor transport links to markets suppressed the potential of the trade.
The North Wales Mineral Railway (NWMR) was promoted locally to connect pits and ironworks to Chester and wharves on the River Dee.
An extension to Ruabon was authorised on 21 July 1845, and the Act included a branch from Wheatsheaf, north of Wrexham, to Brymbo and Minera.
A third Act on 27 July 1846, authorised short branches to collieries at Ffrwd,[note 1] Brynmally, Brymbo and Vron.
[note 2][5] At first horse traction, and gravity, were used on the line, but a small locomotive is reported to have been brought in later, generally operating from Brymbo to Minera.
[7] The earlier (1847) branch from Wheatsheaf Junction to Minera via Brymbo was difficult to work, having two rope-worked inclines.
It ran from a junction south of Wrexham, at Croes Newydd, to Brymbo, where it joined the earlier branch line.
This was to some extent met by the erection of a stationary steam engine at the top of the Moss Valley Incline for the purpose of drawing up the empty trucks, an arrangement which was found to palliate but not to remedy the evil.
[10]The Brynmally Colliery branch had a gradient of 1 in 30; it "ran along the street in Moss so that householders were obliged to cross the tracks to enter their doors".
[11] The continuing demand for mineral transport led to the promotion of the Wrexham, Mold and Connah's Quay Railway, authorised on 7 August 1862.
[12][13] The LNWR (through the Chester and Holyhead Railway) had built a branch line from Mold to coal pits at Tryddyn (Treuddyn), near Coed Talon.
On 5 July 1865 the Wrexham and Minera Railway (which was of course a GWR satellite) obtained powers to extend from Brymbo to join the Tryddyn line.
[note 3] Pits at Coed Talon and Ffrith were being developed at this time, and the LNWR decided that the earlier Tryddyn line was unsuitable.
[14][15] As authorised, the Wrexham and Minera Joint Railway was to run from Brymbo to Coed Talon, but before opening it was altered.
However the infrastructure was divided, the LNWR having sole responsibility on the Coed Talon side of a point 2m 67 ch from Brymbo, near Pantystain level crossing.
[17][18][19] By an Act of 1871 the Wrexham & Minera Joint system was divided as between the GWR/LNWR jointly and the GWR alone; an end-on junction was determined at a point south of Coed Talon and north of Llanfynydd where mileposts were set up showing the distance to Paddington (to the south) and to Euston (to the north).
At the divergence of the line from the W&M track proper, a large sandstone boundary stone was embedded; this read 'GWR' on the one side and 'L&NW & GW Joint Railway' on the other.
[21]The line between Coed Talon and Brymbo, nearly three miles in length, opened to goods trains on 27 January 1872.
[14] The GWR built a Moss Valley branch of 3 miles, authorised on 21 July 1873, and opened in 1882;[note 6] it ran up to Ffrwd Ironworks from a junction with the W&MR main line half a mile west of Croes Newydd, through Gatewen, to join the original access from Wheatsheaf Junction and thus continue access to collieries further north - Brynmally and Ffrwd.
[24] The WM&CQR had been built in part because of dissatisfaction with facilities provided to coal owners and others by the monopoly GWR.
Now that the WM&CQR main line had been built, there was increasingly bitter complaint from those not reached by the limited branch network of the Wrexham company.
[22] After a period of dormancy forced by lack of money, the Wrexham, Mold and Connah's Quay Railway obtained powers on 25 July 1882 to improve its main line.
[25] Nevertheless, the 1882 Act authorised a new WM&CQR branch to Brymbo.This unwelcome incursion was hotly opposed in Parliament by the GWR.
After 30 December 1930 passenger trains ceased to operate on the GWR Brymbo lines, as a result of road competition.
Paradoxically the LNWR and GWR joint service from Mold continued for the time being, providing the only passenger connection to Brymbo, though by 1947 there were only 2 trains a day.
[40] In the 1960s all ordinary goods services in the area were terminated, leaving only a connection for mineral traffic to Brymbo steelworks.
Part of the WM & CQ branch was then converted into a road and lorries began running under the Moss line to reach storage bunkers.
Access to Croes Newydd ceased when the ex-GWR Brymbo branch closed in 1982, but the link reopened in 1983 when ICI began stockpiling coal from the Point of Ayr Colliery near Prestatyn, at Gatewen.
