OSWESTRY retains its reputation as a railway town despite the fact 2021 marks 50 years since the last train passed through.
This is surely testament to the town's status as a railway centre in the decades which preceded the sad closure of the line in 1971.
However it had nearly not been the case.
In the 19th century railway lines were being built across the country and Oswestry had been mooted to be on the line linking Shrewsbury and Chester.
However the Oswestrians of the day had opposed the arrival of the steam railway to their town.
This meant a railway station was built three miles out of the town in Gobowen in 1848 with the line built around Oswestry.
Gobowen Railway Station Pic: Oswestry Station Building Trust
It is recorded that to celebrate the opening, the first train through the station comprised 39 coaches with more than 1,000 people on board and hauled by three locomotives.
This situation lasted three years when Oswestry became home to two stations and heralded a vast expansion of the town which would be changed forever.
The station, known as Oswestry Great Western Railway (GWR), opened on Gobowen Road and accommodated the branch line, linking Oswestry with the main line at Gobowen via a single set of tracks.
The former Cambrian Railways building in Oswestry. Picture: Wikipedia.
The second, known as Oswestry Cambrian, followed in 1860.
In 1865 the Cambrian Railway Company was formed through an amalgamation of smaller companies - and picked Oswestry as its new headquarters.
The Oswestry Cambrian station building became the headquarters for the entire Cambrian Railways network.
Do you recognise these former railway men at the Oswestry sheds?
This building would become the nerve centre of the entire railway and responsible for 300 miles of track stretching from Whitchurch to Pwllheli and Brecon.
Workshops were built to the tune of £28,000 to build - a huge investment in today's money - as Oswestry became an important railway centre and saw the population of the town almost double in 40 years to 9,500 in 1901.
These were the boom years for Oswestry which earned a reputation as the Crewe of Shropshire.
Oswestry - the Crewe of Shropshire.
In 1924 the GWR took over Cambrian Railways and closed Gobowen Road station which was demolished.
In the 1960s the infamous Beeching report spelled the end of hundreds of railway lines across Britain and even Oswestry - the great railway town of Shropshire - would not escape the axe.
The last passenger train left Oswestry in 1965 and the line was closed completely in 1971.
A train passing through Oswestry in the 1960s. Picture by Ben Brooksbank.
The Cambrian Railway Society set up a museum in the locomotive sheds next to Oswestry station, with the aim of re-opening the line from Gobowen to Llanymynech and as far as Porthywaen.
Campaigners have never accepted the closure and ensured the line survived the building of Oswestry bypass during the 1980s with two level crossings installed on the A5 and A483.
These days Gobowen Station is the last remnant of Oswestry's golden railway age having been restored and converted into a tourism hub.
However in recent decades efforts to reopen sections of the track have been successful and in 2005 a mile of track linking Llynclys and Pant was opened.
The dream remains - as it has been since the Beechings Cuts of the 1960s - to reopen the line from Gobowen through Oswestry to Llanymynech and Buttington Junction near Welshpool with a branch off from Llynclys to Llangynog.
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