Notes: Wynnville Halt was located on the Great Western Railway’s (GWR) main line that linked Birmingham to the River Mersey at Birkenhead via Chester. The section of line on which Wynnville was located (between Saltney Junction and Ruabon) had opened on 4 November 1846. It had been promoted by the North Wales Mineral Railway (NWMR) who started work on it in 1844. In July 1846 the NWMR merged with the Shrewsbury, Oswestry & Chester Junction Railway (who had been set up to create a route between Chester & Shrewsbury) to form the Shrewsbury & Chester Railway (S&CR). The S&CR opened an extension of the former NWMR from Wrexham to Shrewsbury on 14 October 1848. The GWR took over on 1 September 1854 (click here to read more about the S&CR).

The halt at Wynnville was opened on 1 February 1934 to serve the small settlement and some local industries just north of Ruabon. It was situated on the north side of a bridge which carried the line over the A483 road (modern day B5605). Access was via concrete steps that linked the halt’s up (Shrewsbury direction) and down (Chester direction) platforms to the road.

The halt was very basic consisting of timber platforms with simple timber waiting shelters.
To the south of the halt was Gardden Lodge Junction where a branch line to Ponkey diverged from the main line. It opened on 1 August 1868 as far as the furnaces at Ponkey, a distance of 1¾ miles. It was extended northwards on 27 August 1876 to Legacy and again on 5 June 1905 when it was connected to the GWR Rhos branch. Although passenger services were introduced onto the branch in 1905 they ran only between Ponkey and Wrexham, going northwards from the former.

For a small halt Wynnville could boast a variety of destinations. Up services ran to Bala, Gobowen, Llangollen, Oswestry and Shrewsbury. In the opposite direction they ran to Wrexham General and Chester General.

On 1 January 1948 the line became part of British Railways [Western Region] (BR[WR]).
The summer timetable for 1949 showed twelve up and eight down services Monday-to-Friday as seen in the table below. There was an extra down service on Saturdays and no trains called at the halt on Sundays.

The BR[WR] timetable for the period 15 September 1958 to 14 June 1959 showed eight up but only two down trains Monday-to-Saturday.

On 12 September 1960 BR[WR]) closed Wynnville Halt along with a number of other stations between Shrewsbury and Chester. It was demolished shortly after leaving only the concrete steps on the down side to show it had existed. On 31 August 1964 Garrden Lodge Junction was removed when the last section of the Ponkey branch closed.

The line remained a busy trunk route until the mid 1960s when many main line services were diverted to other routes or ceased to run. By the late 1970s it had become a shadow of its former self with only an hourly DMU service in each direction.

Following a period of passenger growth in the first decade of the twenty-first century the line was once again handling main line traffic.

Tickets from Michael Stewart and route map by Alan Young

Sources:

• A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain - Volume II North & Mid Wales - Peter E Baughan - David & Charles 1980.
• Encyclopaedia of British Railway Companies - Christopher Awdry - Guild Publishing 1990.
• Paddington to the Mersey - Dr R. Preston Hendry & R. Powell Hendry - Oxford Publishing Company 1992.
• Railway Passenger Stations in Great Britain - A Chronology - Michael Quick - Railway & Canal Historical Society 2009.
• Shrewsbury to Chester - Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith - Middleton Press 2010.

To see the other stations on the Shrewsbury - Chester General line click on the station name: Shrewsbury S&C, Leaton, Oldwoods Halt, Baschurch,
Stanwardine Halt, Haughton Halt, Rednal & West Felton,
Whittington Low Level, Weston Rhyn, Trehowell Halt, Llangollen Road, Whitehurst Halt, Rhosymedre, Cefn, Rhosymedre Halt, Rhos,
Johnstown & Hafod, Rhosrobin Halt, Gresford, Rossett, Pulford,
Balderton and Saltney