Leaving Chester, North Wales trains swing left at Chester West Junction away from the Liverpool line, beyond which can be seen the Traction Maintenance Depot complex. The Diesel Multiple Unit shed of 1957 and the old steam locomotive shed of the Great Western Railway were demolished in 1998 to be replaced by a a new depot for the Class 175 railcars. This depot os owned and operated by Alstonm. Chester Wagon Repair Depot (closed 1998) is on the left here, and on the right at Chester South Junction a single line joins to form a triangular junction which is used by some freight trains avoiding the station.
There are four running lines through the rock cuttings and tunnels
for
the next mile, a reminder of the fact that most of the route to
Llandudno
Junction once needed four tracks to handle the traffic. The second of
the
two tunnels here. Northgate Street Tunnel, carries the line below the
site
of the Cheshire Lines Committee's Chester Northgate station, now a
leisure
centre.
The line cuts through a corner of the old city walls and crosses the Shropshire Union Canal alongside a staircase of locks designed by Thomas Telford, then passes the Roodee racecourse (dates of race meetings) before crossing the river Dee into Wales. The original river bridge here, designed by Robert Stephenson, collapsed under a train not long after it was built, killing people and damaging Stephenson's reputation. The four-track line crossed the river on two parallel bridges built by the LNWR, and referred to as the Roodee Viaduct: only one is still in use.
A mile further on, At Saltney Junction (controlled from Chester) the single line towards Shrewsbury curves away to the left. Now little more than a rural byway, this was once the main line of the old Great Western Railway, with expresses to London Paddington in fierce competition with the LNWR service to London Euston. Next, an area of waste land with a few sidings and a long row of railway-built houses marks Mold Junction, now just a signalbox but once the junction for a branch inland to Mold and Denbigh and a busy steam locomotive shed (closed 1966) and marshalling yard. Later, the site was used for dumping old ballast.
The next landmark, to the left of the line, is Hawarden Airport,
also
known as Chester Airport, whose main runway is at right angles to the
line
and the landing path takes aircraft across the line. Should any
aircraft
land short of the runway, the control town staff can switch signals to
red and stop the trains; even so, to be aboard a train as a landing
takes
place is a somewhat unnerving experience. There are no scheduled
flights
here, however, only private ones, and this is also the location of the
British Auerospace fcatory which manufactures wings for the Airbus
range of airliners.
There are several closed stations on this section: Sandycroft and Queensferry,which precede the first working station on the coast line at Shotton. This is located at the point where the line from Wrexham to Bidston passes above and has a platforms, and forms a useful interchange for passengers from the Wirral area. Despite this, the coast line part of the station was closed in 1966, but reopened again in 1972. There were at one time four tracks here, but by 1972 the outer two had been removed, so new platforms had to be built. This area of the Dee estuary is highly industrialised. In the right distance can be seen the huge buildings of Shotton steelworks, which like the adjacent paper mill is a major customer of the railway, being reached by sidings from the Bidston - Wrexham route. Incidentally, the Wrexham line was once a Welsh outpost of the London and North Eastern Railway.
Soon after Shotton, the remains of the sidings which served C.C. Crump's wagon works can just be seen. This small company's railway work decreased after the withdrawal in the early 1990s of the Associated Octel company's rail freight traffic with its special wagons, and they closed this site soon afterwards. Re-located to smaller premises in Sandicroft, Crumps now specialise in building and repairing Bromine vessels. Little remains of Connah's Quay station, closed in 1966. The scenery in this area has been transformed in the last few years: to the right among the electricity pylons stands a new road bridge over the Dee, built on the cable-stayed principle and completed in 1997 and known as the Flintshire Bridge. The tower is 118 metres high, and the assymetric main span is 294 metres. Rockcliffe Hall signalbox had to be demolished when the road was bridged over the railway, and its replacement, a basic prefabricated structure, can be seen on the right by the bridge. Next on the right the Connah's Quay electricity station comes in to view, built in 1996 and notable for its row of huge concrete 'plant pots.' Operated by Powergen, it is a combined cycle gas turbine plant, based on a design first used in 1992 at Killingholme on Humberside, and fed by gas which comes ashore by pipeline from the Liverpool Bay gas field. This site once housed a traditional coal-fired (and rail-served) power station known as Rockcliffe Hall.
After passing through the short Rockcliffe Hall Tunnel, the train
arrives
at the town of Flint (or Fflint: there seems some doubt as to
whether
the Welsh spelling should be used) - an important town which does not
get
the train service it deserves. The ruins of the castle can be seen in
the
middle distance on the right as the train enters the station. Flint
Castle
is not as well known as the others along this coast: it was completed
in
1284 at the command of King Edward. Severely damaged in the Civil War
of
the 1640s, it fell into greater ruin when much of keep collapsed in
1848,
the year the railway opened. See the excellent Castles
of Wales site for much more information.
