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Authors: Michael Williams
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unpleasant,â announces the captain over the intercom, âbut weâll make it to the other side eventually.â Old trains, old ferries. But at least they get you there.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE 10.30 FROM WREXHAM CENTRAL â UP THE LINE TO LONDONâS LAST TERMINUS
Wrexham Central to London Marylebone, via Gobowen, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Banbury and High Wycombe
âGO THROUGH THE multi-storey,â says the nice young man in the Games Workshop. âTake a left and youâll see a pile of Asda catalogues.â Iâm in a bleak shopping centre in Wrexham, North Wales, looking for what must be the most forlorn railway terminus in Britain. And here it is, tucked in between Argos Extra and Asda Living. It may have a grand-sounding name, but Wrexham Central is nothing more than a single track and a large red set of buffers sandwiched between the shops. There are piles of broken glass on the platform and a group of youths flick stones at beer cans on the track.
It is a small miracle that this, the farthest outpost of one of the grandest railway companies in the land, which once spread its tentacles from Scarborough to Stratford-upon-Avon and from Newcastle to Neath, should have survived in this inhospitable place. Once you could book a ticket at Londonâs Marylebone station and travel behind the magnificent green engines of the Great Central Railway, pompously named after the directors of the board, on the line to Wrexham (or Manchester or Sheffield, Nottingham or Hull) without leaving the companyâs metals.
It is hard to imagine on this rainy morning in Wrexham that this was part of one of the most grandly conceived projects of the Railway Age. Back in the 1890s, Sir Edward Watkin, chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, as the Great Central was then known, had a dream. It wasnât enough to fill the companyâs coffers with the profits from humping coal and iron across the Pennines; he would build a new line to London. Never mind that all the other railway companies had already built their own lines to the capital, he would park his own terminus in the Euston Road to rival Euston, St Pancras and Kingâs Cross. But Sir Edward, described by one of his contemporaries as a âgambler and a megalomaniacâ, wasnât going to stop there. There was an even grander master plan. In 1881 he promoted a parliamentary bill to build the first Channel tunnel, even getting so far as to begin drilling a pilot tunnel into the chalk, where he audaciously hosted a champagne party for investors. Soon, he promised them, it would be possible to travel direct from the industrial towns of northern England to the Continent and beyond. The rewards would be beyond compare.
But it was all doomed. The magnificent engineering of Watkinâs London extension rivalled that of Stephenson and Brunel, with a generous loading gauge, easy gradients and just one level crossing in its entire length. But despite the huge razzmatazz when it opened in 1899, with a splendid dinner hosted on the station platform, the last conventional main line to be built in Britain was simply too late and never caught on. It was the first main line to lose its passenger services, and fizzled out ignominiously at the hands of Beeching in 1966, when the once-grand expresses, such as the Master Cutler and South Yorkshireman, had dwindled to three semi-fast trains a day to Nottingham, pulled by filthy, wheezing Black Five Class steam locomotives. The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, dubbed the âMoney Sunk and Lostâ, had spawned a new acronym in the Great Central, the Gone Completely. But not entirely, as we shall soon discover. Watkin was simply ahead of his time and would have enjoyed the irony that although it took Britain another century to get round to building its next new main line, this one really did run through a Channel tunnel.
Just imagine it. Book me a ticket from Wrexham to Vienna or St
CHAPTER FOUR
THE 10.30 FROM WREXHAM CENTRAL â UP THE LINE TO LONDONâS LAST TERMINUS
Wrexham Central to London Marylebone, via Gobowen, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Banbury and High Wycombe
âGO THROUGH THE multi-storey,â says the nice young man in the Games Workshop. âTake a left and youâll see a pile of Asda catalogues.â Iâm in a bleak shopping centre in Wrexham, North Wales, looking for what must be the most forlorn railway terminus in Britain. And here it is, tucked in between Argos Extra and Asda Living. It may have a grand-sounding name, but Wrexham Central is nothing more than a single track and a large red set of buffers sandwiched between the shops. There are piles of broken glass on the platform and a group of youths flick stones at beer cans on the track.
It is a small miracle that this, the farthest outpost of one of the grandest railway companies in the land, which once spread its tentacles from Scarborough to Stratford-upon-Avon and from Newcastle to Neath, should have survived in this inhospitable place. Once you could book a ticket at Londonâs Marylebone station and travel behind the magnificent green engines of the Great Central Railway, pompously named after the directors of the board, on the line to Wrexham (or Manchester or Sheffield, Nottingham or Hull) without leaving the companyâs metals.
It is hard to imagine on this rainy morning in Wrexham that this was part of one of the most grandly conceived projects of the Railway Age. Back in the 1890s, Sir Edward Watkin, chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, as the Great Central was then known, had a dream. It wasnât enough to fill the companyâs coffers with the profits from humping coal and iron across the Pennines; he would build a new line to London. Never mind that all the other railway companies had already built their own lines to the capital, he would park his own terminus in the Euston Road to rival Euston, St Pancras and Kingâs Cross. But Sir Edward, described by one of his contemporaries as a âgambler and a megalomaniacâ, wasnât going to stop there. There was an even grander master plan. In 1881 he promoted a parliamentary bill to build the first Channel tunnel, even getting so far as to begin drilling a pilot tunnel into the chalk, where he audaciously hosted a champagne party for investors. Soon, he promised them, it would be possible to travel direct from the industrial towns of northern England to the Continent and beyond. The rewards would be beyond compare.
But it was all doomed. The magnificent engineering of Watkinâs London extension rivalled that of Stephenson and Brunel, with a generous loading gauge, easy gradients and just one level crossing in its entire length. But despite the huge razzmatazz when it opened in 1899, with a splendid dinner hosted on the station platform, the last conventional main line to be built in Britain was simply too late and never caught on. It was the first main line to lose its passenger services, and fizzled out ignominiously at the hands of Beeching in 1966, when the once-grand expresses, such as the Master Cutler and South Yorkshireman, had dwindled to three semi-fast trains a day to Nottingham, pulled by filthy, wheezing Black Five Class steam locomotives. The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, dubbed the âMoney Sunk and Lostâ, had spawned a new acronym in the Great Central, the Gone Completely. But not entirely, as we shall soon discover. Watkin was simply ahead of his time and would have enjoyed the irony that although it took Britain another century to get round to building its next new main line, this one really did run through a Channel tunnel.
Just imagine it. Book me a ticket from Wrexham to Vienna or St
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