A RAILWAY engineer has put forward ambitious plans to redesign the Welsh rail network - and he thinks Oswestry could feature in the plans.

Gareth Dennis made a video on his YouTube channel, Rail Natter, detailing a potential new route linking north and south Wales, including locations such as Builth Wells, Newtown and Welshpool.

But he also claims that travelling north of Powys the line could nip over the border and include Oswestry and the existing railway network.

Mr Dennis described the existing Welsh network as “a mess”, adding: “There isn't really a "Welsh" network at all, it is just a series of branches of the English one.”

In his YoutTube video he said: "North from Brecon to Builth is fairly straight forward, there are some challenges with a bit of the Brecon Beacons.

"You get to a bit which doesn't have a railway, which is the connection between Llandrindod and up to Newtown.

"It gets a bit hilly, but not too bad.

"You get up to Newtown and then you intersect the Cambrian line, then up to Welshpool.

"From Welshpool, you divert off the Cambrian Line and I would suggest going into Oswestry.

"There is an existing line and route which you can exploit.

"And then whether you continue following up Chirk, Ruabon."

Mr Dennis said demography and geography impacted on the rail construction.

He added: "The West Midlands and Greater Manchester both have a population the same size of Wales.

"You can see it is very sparsely populated for the most part.

"There is nothing there."

Mr Dennis added that Wales' geography made it harder to build railways given the hilly and mountainous nature of the country.

"Brecon Beacons, Cambrian Mountains, Snowdonia, those do stop railways from happening when railways are being built on the cheap as freight."

Mr Dennis said the rail map of Wales was one which was designed for resource extraction.

He added: "This network, particularly in South Wales, is a railway network you might see in one of the various imperial coastal regions in the continent of Africa.

"These networks are designed for resource extraction, they are designed to take things in the ground and get them to harbours to send them elsewhere.

"This is the sort of railway designed to extract resources at pace.

"The fact that this railway network was set up to strip resources and send them to England and the rest of the world as part of the broader imperial machine is partly why the network is so bad."

You can watch the full video via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyJBNf6SGhM