Shropshire Routes to Roots

2. The railways begin

The canal companies start building railways

The local canal companies, alive to the threat of losing business to the railways, started to build short rail lines from quarries to the canal sides as did some of the mineral companies. Three small coal pits near Morda got together and built a short tramway to the Llanymynech branch of the Montgomery Canal at Gronwen Wharf. For more information on this, read Getting goods to market: Beyond Shropshire (Opens in a new window) elsewhere on this site.

Why build railways?

Railways were not built primarily to fulfil a public need, many other factors drove their growth. Every railway built needed an Act of Parliament (opens in a new window) to be passed to permit and describe the proposed development.

Some of the driving forces to development were:

• developing connections to the growing national rail stystem, and hence bigger markets for products from the Mid Wales woolen mills and many other products from the area;
• transporting tourists to the growing Welsh coast resorts;
• the spur of competition with the canals for the transport of minerals;
• the monetary profit available by connecting to the rail complex around the mines and quarries of north Wales;
• MONEY: railways were very much about making money for the company shareholders.

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