The Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Light Railway

The Rise and Fall of a Rural Byway

Peter Johnson

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Transport
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526776181
• Subtopic: British History

The Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Light Railway, was one of the lines managed and operated by Colonel Holman Fred Stephens from his office in Salford Terrace in Tonbridge Kent. It was a revival of the long disused Potteries Shrewsbury & North Wales Railway, a railway that went bankrupt shortly after opening in the mid 1860s and was left derelict for forty years. The railway reopened in 1911 to much local rejoicing, however the company was in financial difficulties by the 1920s and withdrew its passenger services in the early 1930s. During the Second World War the army took over the railway, constructing ammunition and stores depots along its entire length. After the war the railway continued to be operated by the army until closed in 1960, when it was handed over to the Western Region of British Railways for demolition. The author has researched the history of this fascinating bucolic railway over many years. In this new book he presents much previously unpublished information and many fascinating insights into the railway's complicated history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements and Sources
• Chapter 1 Setting the scene – the mania and the railway’s origins
• Chapter 2 The Potteries, Shrewsbury & North Wales Railway
• Chapter 3 Receivership and abandonment
• Chapter 4 The Shropshire Railways
• Chapter 5 Another receivership
• Chapter 6 The Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Light Railway
• Chapter 7 Trains Running Again
• Chapter 8 The inter-war years
• Chapter 9 The War Office Railway
• Chapter 10 Nationalisation, the finale, and closure
• APPENDICES
• Bibliography