Wrexham General station was once two rail stations. Both had their origins in the lucrative job of transporting the large volumes of coal and iron produced in this area.
The North Wales Mineral Railway was first to set up in 1844 to create a railway between Chester and Ruabon. Eventually this line passed to the Great Western Railway, which named the station Wrexham General and rebuilt it from 1909 to 1912. The distinctive shape of the station building’s roof – which you can look down on from the road bridge across the tracks – was a feature of GWR stations of that period.
The other station here, Wrexham Exchange, was to the west, on a railway opened in 1863 by the Wrexham, Mold and Connah’s Quay Railway. This line eventually became the only Welsh outpost of the London & North Eastern Railway, better known for the Flying Scotsman and other trains on the East Coast Main Line. From Exchange, trains ran north to the port town of Birkenhead. In the other direction they turned sharp left, dived under the GWR line and continued to Wrexham Central, Bangor-on-Dee and Ellesemere.
After nationalisation, the ex-LNER line was truncated to Wrexham Central and the other line reduced to a single track from Wrexham to Saltney, near Chester. Wrexham General’s status was downgraded in 1967, when British Railways withdrew services between Birkenhead and London Paddington.
The station was rejuvenated after BR’s privatisation. The GWR structures were refurbished in the late 1990s. Services improved in 2005, when Arriva Trains Wales introduced regular hourly trains via Wrexham from Holyhead to Shrewsbury, continuing alternately to Cardiff and Birmingham. The fusion of Exchange and General was completed in 2011, when Network Rail provided a passenger lift to ensure everyone could access one half of the station from the other, without a detour over the road bridge.
Cambrian Ironworks, which hosted a munitions factory in the First World War and afterwards produced motorcycles, was founded by John Evan Powell and Robert John Powell in 1876, joined by John Whitaker in 1877, with premises ideally placed next to Wrexham General station. The firm exported its award-winning agricultural machinery to many countries. You can see some of its farm machines at the National Trust’s Erddig Hall and outside the Bersham heritage centre.
During the First World War, Wrexham’s National Shell Factory was established here, employing 220 women and 36 men. It produced up to 12,000 18lb shells per week. Its women’s football team played at Wrexham Racecourse to raise funds for the town’s two military hospitals.
After the war the Powell Brothers placed prominent adverts in the local press to find employment for the women workers. The company reverted to producing farm machinery. In 1920 it diversified into motorcycle manufacture. The first model had a 4HP rating and featured a large external flywheel. It was designed by Edward Burney, who had learned about motorbikes as a dispatch rider in the war.Other models included ones designed for women and a three-wheel motorbike with sidecar (passenger seat). The company had an agent in Paris. Many bikes were built here before the global economic depression forced the company to close in 1927. The site was taken over by Rogers and Jackson, selling building materials and homeware, and has now been cleared in preparation for the proposed transport hub for the town.
