Situated in the Welsh borderland to the West of Oswestry, the scenic Tanat Valley reached westwards into Wales, its Llangynog terminus nestling where the road starts the climb over the Berwyn mountain range towards Bala. It was a lightly populated area that sustained agriculture and some mineral extraction whose residents struggled to get their produce to market. During the 19th Century there were several schemes for a railway that failed due their inability to raise sufficient capital. The Tanat Valley Light Railway is, therefore, a true child of the 1896 Light Railways Act, promoted by the Oswestry Urban District Council the following year to take advantage of the grant-making facilities of that legislation. Because it took so long to obtain powers, and it was not opened until 1906, the Light Railway never really fulfilled its potential. Operated initially by the Cambrian Railways, it was not heavily worked, although it benefited from pipe traffic generated by renewals of Liverpool Corporation’s Vyrnwy reservoir pipeline. Although closure came in stages during the 1950s, and was deemed to be complete in 1960, a short section of track remains in situ at Porthywaen. Author Peter Johnson has drawn on the material available at the National Archives at Kew and the Parliamentary Archives in the House of Lords as well as conducting extensive research in digitised newspapers to tell the Light Railway’s story, producing the first in-depth account of its development, operation and closure. Peter Johnson is also the author of The Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Light Railway – the rise and fall of a rural byway, published by Pen & Sword Transport in 2024. The two railways were connected at Blodwel Junction and the surviving section of the Tanat Valley Light Railway thence to Porthywaen enabled stone traffic on the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire’s Nantmawr branch to continue until 1971.

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.

Appendices accompany vols. 64, 67-71.