Shropshire Routes to Roots

5. Changing transport

Background

As the Transport and communication themes demonstrate, there have been many changes in the way goods and people are carried. Today the majority of people or goods travel by car or lorry. In the past, however, it was the railways and canals which were dominant. For the people who benefited from, and worked on, the railways and canals, these forms of transport were an important part of daily life in Shropshire.

The Cambrian Railway

Oswestry was once a thriving, bustling railway town at the centre of a major system, but since the railway links closed many years ago the town has taken on a different look. You can find out more about The Cambrian Railways in and around Oswestry in the Transport and communication: The Cambrian Railway theme.

What do you recall about the trains running out of Oswestry on the Cambrian Lines?
Well there was a passenger service used to run twice a day, leaving Oswestry about quarter-past-seven in the morning, returning about quarter-to-eleven then leaving Oswestry about four-twenty [in the afternoon] and coming back about ten [at night].

That was the passenger service. That was served by two side tank engines, 1196 and 1197. Of course, the coaches were extremely busy. As far as the goods was concerned we did used to use old Cambrian engines that were here. This was out of the Cambrian station in Oswestry.

In those days 90%, if not near enough 100% of all the farm goods and coal and everything were carried up there. [the Tannat Valley] We used to stop at the various stations, starting at Llanyblodwell Junction. You'd be shunting the various stuff off, and picking up empties at the end route. Llanrhaeadr and Llangynog were the general principal stations up there.

So this was all the farm supplies, shop supplies?
Not so much shop supplies. Coal and farm goods - the bulk supplies - all the cattle were brought out from there in those days. They'd bring the cattle out from the valleys and onto there. I think it was about twice a year the bulk sheep sales up there, and we'd bring them back to Oswestry then went on to either Chester or Wolverhampton. They used to have two very big sheep sales, both in Llanrhaeadr and Llangynog. The sheep would be brought down to Llangynog and penned there, then sold out of the pens in Llangynog and loaded on back to Oswestry and wherever after that.

And then of course there was the slate from the mines in Llangynog. [What sort of slate products would be brought out?]...it depended on...some of it was cut slate as I remember - because slate cutting was an art not many people could do, - and others would be rock, but basically tons of roofing slate. They would be cut at the mines there then loaded. I don't recollect anything else being loaded from there...[apart from] the billiard table slabs, they used to be loaded on a special truck with a flat bottom.

And then of course, on a Wednesday, with the train running, you'd get all the poultry and eggs coming in. In the early days from Llangynog to Oswestry for the Wednesday market. This was the main route for the Tannat Valley, in my early days - I started on the railway line in 1943/2 - I can't remember exactly what time the cars took over but it might have been the early fifties.

I started at 16 on the railway during the war as a cleaner, an engine cleaner - the dirtiest job on the railway. I worked up from engine cleaner to fireman. It wasn't until you were in your thirties that you could be made a driver. Just shovelling coal - the happiest days of my working life that was. There was a camaraderie on the footplate and railwaymen in general, that you don't see in Oswestry now.

I cooked many a egg and bacon on the fireman's shovel. This was after the World War. We had one job working out of Oswestry we called the double O to Aberystwyth We'd get up 2:30 in the morning, get up to Aberystwyth at seven o'clock, book off, lodge there, come back half past six at night, get back here at half past eleven. So you'd have to sleep in the guard's van in the siding then take your eggs and bacon and cook it there - you took your food out for the whole day.

The original Great Western station is where the bus station and Somerfield's is now. The old Gobowen Road works was a very big employer - I never worked there. I worked out as a train crew. And our gaffer in those days was S. W. Harris. He was the local motor superintendent in those days The traffic superintendent was T. C. Sellis, and the chief engineer, a chap C. A. Neil.

During the wartime was there any notion of the war going on? Did the war affect your work on the railway?
Oh yes, certainly it did do. You had to very careful about showing lights and that sort of thing. One night we were coming back from Aberystwyth and they actually dropped an incendiary in Sweeny Park. Some said they dropped the bomb on the light of our train coming in, whether it were true or not I don't know.

Did you having anything to do with transportation of prisoners of war or evacuees?
Ambulance trains. There was a medical hospital here, and several others, I worked on several ambulance trains. You'd just back on one end the wagons and pull them.

So when did the railway start to decline?
Summer time here - in its heyday - you'd get as many as...Butlin's used to have at least three trains going from this end. One from Liverpool, one from Manchester, one coming through to Shrewsbury going to Butlin's Holiday Camp - Pwllheli. We used to go down lodging there the night before and bring the first train out in the morning. They were special Butlins' trains. I don't know how many came from Shrewsbury altogether. The ones from Shrewsbury came in via Welshpool as they do now.

[Contributed by George on 30th January, 2004]

Life on the Ellesmere Canal

Shropshire was once criss-crossed by canals. Although in the latter part of the nineteenth century they declined as the railways took over, even into the twentieth century canals were still used to carry goods. You can find out more about the canals in the The Shropshire Union Canal and the The day the canal came themes.

I was born at Hampton Bank near Welshampton, about 100 yards from Hampton canal bridge. I can remember very few barges on the canal. Those that were on there carried building stone - the bulk stuff. They were flat boats, and families lived on the barges; horse-drawn - not as big and heavy as a shire horse. They were placid creatures, usually walking on their own but sometimes being led.

The linesman was still working there. He used to walk along the length clearing the canal of weeds and debris. It was a pleasant walk along the towpath, although now it is decrepit.

We used to catch coarse fish from the canal - trout, roach, perch and gudgeon. But we were not really allowed to play near the canal, except when we went to play at the house of a friend whose dad was the linesman. Nobody thought anything of canals, they were just there for working. Not like today when they are used for pleasure boats.

Transport has changed a lot. The area was very, very rural. You knew everybody and their habits. I used to walk to school and when a car came along you stopped and stared, it was that unusual.

[Contributed by Christina on 30th January, 2004]

My grandfather had a salt warehouse where he used to store salt. The only stretch of canal I really knew was the long tunnel up to Chirk Bank.

There was a sidesman there called Billy McBergsides and he used to have a flat bottomed punt which he propelled with a pole and he used to drag the weed out of the canal with a long rake, load the punt, then take the weed and dispose of it.

[What kind of boats were on the canal?] They were canal barges where people lived on them and they carried coal and that sort of thing. We used to go talk to them. The best way I can describe them is as gypsies on the canal. They used to tie up at nights and be off the next day for new stock. How the children were educated it was always a mystery to me. The nearest school to where they used to tie up would be Chirk, and that was about a mile and a half away and I don't ever remember seeing the kids go to school there, though I'm going back in the late 1920s/1930s.

The families were like the old-fashioned - genuine travelling gypsies - living on boats. They were a bit rough and ready. They used to wash their clothes in the canal and they'd go to a house and cadge [ask for] drinking water. Ther'd be one man at the front leading the horse and one steering. The boats would be loaded with coal - two or three kids on the boat - families of four or five.

The boats were done up, not as elaborate as today but similar. That's a tradition that has come down, all the ornamental jugs and that. I'm sure they were more battered, and not like they are on the pleasure barges nowadays. Gypsy caraven groups - they were the same.

I never noticed any trouble between them. That's not saying there couldn't have been fight, but I never witnessed it. They were a like a crowd of people of their own, just like the travelling gypsies. They used to come for water, but I never ever known them selling anything, I don't suppose they had time for making stuff like that, carrying coal.

I can clearly remember the old long tunnel: we used to be afraid of the long tunnel at Chirk. They used to have to put lights on the boats, 'cos only one could get one boat through at a time. You could see the lights from the other end - it was absolutely straight. There was always water dripping off it. We were always afraid of it; we never used to play there.

And of course there was always the danger of the aqueduct. Parents would be afraid of you playing on the aqueduct because of the drop. I went many a walk along there. It must have been a nightmare for them kids because the fencing round the aqueduct was never secure and the drop down there was several hundred feet. My granddad brought ten kids up there, by the side of the canal.

[In] my early days - I don't remember it working - there was what they called a chain bank going up the canal up onto the Chirk valley and here used to be winding wheels. They pulled boats up from the bottom and drag them up to the top and vice versa. There was no engines in those days. I can remember them [the winding wheels] there, but I don't remember them working, but they were there for years.

[Contributed by George on 30th January, 2004]

Continue

Return to top of page