December 2016.  Member's talk at the Christmas meeting, before the a.g.m.

​

Brian Hubble presented a sound-and-vision DVD entitled 'The Rhyl to Corwen Railway, 50 Years on.' 

 

The railway through Dyffryn Clwyd was opened in the 1860's, originally built by three companies - 

​

The Vale of Clwyd Railway  - Rhyl to Denbigh, connecting with the North Wales Coast line.

​

The Denbigh, Ruthin and Corwen railway - Denbigh to Corwen, connecting with the Wrexham - Ruabon - Cambrian Coast line.

​

The Mold and Denbigh Junction Railway - with an end-on connection at Mold to the line from Chester via Saltney (Mold Junction). Mold Junction (Saltney) to Denbigh.

​

By the 1870's all three companies had been absorbed by the London and North Western Railway.

​

There were several intermediate stations along the line and, with road communications being poor, it operated as a going concern for many decades as a freight and passenger line, with considerable economic benefit to the local area.

​

However the blight of wartime and the development of motor transport on modern roads led to the decline of traffic and increasing decrepitude. All traffic had ceased my the mid-1960's and the line was closed - the southern section pre-dating the Beeching Report by a few months.

  

The speaker had identified the locations of several photographs taken during the steam era along the line, as discovered in a book 'Railways Along the Clwyd Valley: Corwen to Rhyl' by Bill Rear, published by Foxline , and had visited these locations to photograph the present-day view from, as far as possible, the same angle. The then-and-now images were juxtaposed in a DVD incorporating steam sound and nostalgic music. For many of the members this brought back memories of their use of the railway in their youth.

​

While in some locations the railway has left no trace, where either nature has reclaimed the scene or human constructions have obliterated its course, there remains a motley collection of clues as to its former existence in both rural and urban locations.

​

For copyright reasons this DVD cannot be made available to the public.