an enforced closure of the line on 22 June 1880. This was the end of the Potteries, Shrewsbury and North Wales Railway and the core of its infrastructure network. After the suspension R S France was still the proprietor of quarries at Nantmawr, and he still needed to get his product to market. The Nantmawr branch of the Potts line crossed the Cambrian Railways line at Llanymynech. If a connection was made, the Nantmawr line could become a branch of the Cambrian Railways and operate as a mineral line. France negotiated with the Cambrian Railways and with the Receiver of the Potts line, and a deal was done. From 1 June 1881 the Cambrian would carry the traffic, and pay the PSNWR 3d a ton for the use of the branch. It evidently took some time to implement the agreement, for the traffic started on 1 January 1886. In time the Cambrian saw that this was potentially a permanent arrangement, and altered its lines at Llanymynech so that the continuation of its line to Llanfyllin branched from the Nantmawr branch; previously the two branches had crossed one another, and this arrangement simplified operations. The new system was opened on The Nantmawr branch reopened on 1 January 1896 and the Cambrian deviation was commissioned on 27 January 1896. The Tanat Valley Light Railway was later opened, on 5 January 1904; on an east – west trajectory it crossed the Nantmawr branch at Blodwell Junction, actually using a short section of the branch. In fact from this time the Nantmawr terminus was reached from Blodwell Junction, and the section of the earlier Shropshire Railway to Blodwell from the junction on the Cambrian Railways west of Llanymynech was closed down. Meanwhile, a new railway scheme was created, reviving earlier aspirations to connect the Potteries district. The Potts shareholders agreed on 14 March 1888 to accept £350,000 as the value of their shares, to be transferred to shares in a new Shropshire Railways Company, which was to build a connecting line to Hodnet on the Great Western Railway's Wellington to Market Drayton line. The line was authorised by Act of 7 August 1888 but never built. On 24 August the Potts company's rolling stock and other moveable assets were sold by public auction. Revival The major part of the Potteries Railway network was thus inactive and unmaintained. It appeared that there might never be