The Wrexham and Minera Railway or Wrexham and Minera Branch was a railway line in North Wales between the city of Wrexham, the village of Brymbo where it served the Brymbo Steelworks, and the lead mines and limeworks at Minera. A further branch ran from Brymbo to Coed Talon, where it connected with lines to Mold. The system was constructed in several stages between 1844 and 1872, while the various lines making up the system closed in 1952, 1972 and 1982. A directly competing route to Brymbo was opened by the Wrexham, Mold and Connah's Quay Railway in the 1880s. It closed in stages between 1954 and 1970. History The railway was one of several constructed to serve the intensive quarrying, mining and iron founding operations in the area west of Wrexham, which were undergoing considerable expansion in the mid 19th century thanks to exploitation of the underlying Middle Coal Measures. Construction The section of line between Brymbo and Minera had originally been part of the former North Wales Mineral Railway, built in 1844 and later incorporated into the Great Western Railway. This line's operation was constrained by the rope-worked inclines, locally known as "brakes", and had 2 tunnels along its route through the hilly country between Wheatsheaf Junction, near Wrexham, and Brymbo. As a result of the expanding traffic on the line and the bottleneck created by the inclines, an Act of 1861 proposed that a new railway, the Wrexham and Minera Railway, would be constructed from Croes Newydd, at Wrexham on the main Shrewsbury-Chester line of the Great Western Railway to Brymbo, where it would join the GWR's existing route to Minera. The new railway company would have a capital of £48,000 in total (£36,000 of which would be in shares) and the power to enter into agreement with GWR on operational matters and division of receipts. George Robert Jebb, who had previously worked on the Shrewsbury-Chester route, was appointed Resident Engineer. After 18 months construction the line was opened without ceremony on 22 May 1862. The new trackbed was dual track and joined the old single track formation just past Brymbo tunnel, thereby removing the use of both tunnels, the Brymbo tunnel was described as "delapidated". The new line involved the construction of twelve bridges, and a large area with 6 new sidings was provided at Croes Newydd goods Station which took over from Wheatsheaf station for