STEAM RAILMOTORS AND PUSH-PULL AUTO TRAINS IN THE WREXHAM DISTRICT PART ONE GWR STEAM RAILMOTORS 1904-1933
The Denbighshire coalfield around Wrexham and Ruabon formed one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution. By the mid-eighteenth century shallow coal pits, early blast furnaces and stone quarries were being worked. Transport of materials and products slowly evolved from pack horse and carting to narrow gauge horse-worked plateways. Some fed the canal wharf at Telford’s 1805 Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. Volume output awaited conventional standard gauge railways. A dense network was to develop between 1847 and 1901. Most of the branches were single lines which became Great Western Railway. The London & North Western penetrated marginally from Mold. Later incursions saw the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire/Great Central reach the coalfield over the 1866 Wrexham, Mold & Connah’s Quay Railway from the north. In 1895 a Cambrian branch was completed to Wrexham from the main line at Ellesmere to the south.
North west of Wrexham, the land slopes steeply up to the moors and fragments into north-south aligned valleys separated by stepped ridges. The pioneer 1847 North Wales Mineral Railway branch to pits, ironworks and quarries therefore opted for canal methods. There were two rope-worked inclines and two tunnels below the ridge tops to ascend over 600ft. Later branches traced the valley floors. The 1862 GWR Wrexham and Minera to the NWM route through Brymbo followed the Lodge valley circuitously from the south, replacing one incline. As mine shafts migrated east to deeper seams spurs and sidings were built. A GW branch to serve collieries in the Moss valley was completed in 1882, preempting an MS&L backed scheme to access the valley mines and ironworks by a branch from the WM&CQ line at Gwersyllt. Only in that year was a passenger timetable to Brymbo begun by the GW. All other branches remained single track mineral lines.
South west of Wrexham near Ruabon relief was more subdued east of the hills and branches grew in in the latter nineteenth century. One was a LNWR adaptation of early plateways to the Canal wharf. By 1867 a steeply graded standard gauge branch joined the aqueduct wharf to pits south of Rhos. Another, the Ponkey branch, extended westwards from the main line. Brickworks, many reusing mine shafts to win fireclay for kilns, dotted the Ruabon district.
