Bishops Castle Railway

Bishop's Castle is a small town located in Shropshire near the border with Montgomeryshire, now Powys. Its population in the middle decades of the nineteenth century was about 2,000. The town had been on the route of a proposed trunk line to Porth Dinllaen, which was seen as a packet port for Ireland at one time, but that scheme had come to nothing.

To the east the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway had opened its main line in 1852; there was a station at Craven Arms, named after a nearby inn that had been a staging post for the coaches. To the west, lay the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, which was promoted in 1859: its main purpose was to connect a group of small railways at Newtown with the English railway network, by way of Oswestry. The O&NR had a Montgomery station, but it was two miles from the town it served. That part of the line opened in 1862.

At this time it had become clear that rural towns that were not connected to a railway would suffer economically, as necessities brought in, and manufactures and agricultural products sent out, were expensive to transport by other means. Accordingly the idea developed of a railway branch line from the Craven Arms station to a point on the O&NR near Montgomery, serving the town and intermediate areas. From a junction at Wistanstow near Craven Arms, this would run through Lydham and join the O&NR north of Montgomery station, near the bridge over the River Camlad. The town of Montgomery is on a hill, and the route of the proposed railway could not be made close to the town; a short branch line to it would be built. There would also be a branch from Lydham to Bishop's Castle.

At public meetings locally, the scheme received enthusiastic support, and a parliamentary bill went forward; the railway was authorised by the Bishop's Castle Railway Act 1861 (24 & 25 Vict. c. ciii), on 28 June 1861. Authorised share capital was £180,000, to build 19+1⁄4 miles of line.

There was dismay when the scheme was published, for it was then seen that Bishop's Castle was planned to be on a branch and not the main line. The Shrewsbury Chronicle commented, "The railway is a misnomer, for Bishop's Castle will never enjoy much, if any, of its vast benefits". As a result of local feeling, the Committee of the House of Commons introduced a clause in the Railway Bill requiring that a branch from Lydham Heath to Bishop's Castle must be opened concurrently with the main line.