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Welshampton rail crash

1897 in England19th century in ShropshireAccidents and incidents involving Lancashire and Yorkshire RailwayDerailments in EnglandHistory of Shropshire
June 1897 eventsRailway accidents and incidents in ShropshireRailway accidents in 1897Use British English from March 2017

The Welshampton rail crash was a fatal railway accident in the Welsh borders village of Welshampton on 11 June 1897. It resulted in the deaths of 12 people. An excursion to Barmouth had been organised by the United Sunday Schools of Royton. A group of 320 passengers were on board a train of mixed Cambrian Railways (CR) and Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) stock of 15 carriages, pulled by two locomotives. Earlier in the day a CR guard had complained of the rough-riding of a small 4-wheeled L&YR brake van, which on the return journey was at the front of the train. The train left Barmouth at 18:00. At about 22:20 one of the engines and 13 of the coaches left the rails of the CR's Oswestry, Ellesmere and Whitchurch Railway, 154 yards (141 m) east of Welshampton station. Nine passengers were killed in what was the first fatal accident on the line since it was built, two other passengers and a railway employee died later from injuries. Although the initial investigation centred on the first carriage to leave the rails, an L&YR third-class brake coach, the enquiry concluded though that the speed of the train was too high considering the state of the track which had many sleepers in need of replacement, also too light a rail for high speed running. The CR disputed the findings and maintained that the L&Y vehicle was to blame. A memorial on the front of the Town Hall in Royton, Greater Manchester names, those killed in the accident. A second memorial, installed by local people, at the side of the A495 Ellesmere to Whitchurch road, near to the site of the accident, shows the Cambrian Railways coat of arms. The railway line between Oswestry, Ellesmere and Whitchurch is now disused and, although some of the line is visible, the site of the accident itself has been ploughed out. Welshampton Station building still exists and has been converted into a house. This second memorial stone is located just in front of its fence by the roadside.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Welshampton rail crash (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Welshampton rail crash
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N 52.9155 ° E -2.832 °
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A495
SY12 0QA , Welshampton and Lyneal
England, United Kingdom
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Lyneal
Lyneal

Lyneal is a small village in the civil parish of Welshampton and Lyneal, in Shropshire, England. Its earliest recorded name was Lunval. It has also been known as Lineal. John Bartholomew described it in 1887 in an entry in his Gazetteer of the British Isles thus: "Lineal cum Colemere, eccl. dist., Ellesmere and Welsh Hampton pars., Shropshire, pop. 367; contains Lineal, hamlet, 3 miles S.E. of Ellesmere; P.O., called Lyneal." It was formerly part of the parish of Lyneal cum Colemere. According to Edward Cassey and Co.'s 1871 History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Shropshire, "LYNEAL CUM COLEMERE are two villages and townships forming a new parish recently taken out of the parish of Ellesmere. The church is a beautiful specimen of Gothic architecture on a small scale. It was built at a cost of about 2,500 by Lady Marian Alford as a memorial church to her son the late Earl Brownlow it is dedicated to St John the Evangelist and will afford sitting accommodation to 220 persons the seats are all free The living is a vicarage value 164 per annum in the gift of Earl Brownlow and held by the Rev R Lundin Brown MA. The village of COLEMERE is nearly three miles cast by south from Ellesmere. The township contains 1,440 acres of land the property of Earl Brownlow. LYNEAL is a township and village three miles south east from Ellesmere. The township contains 1,897 acres of land. Wyneal Wood is a farm in the occupation of Mr Andrew Bickley. At Lyneal there is a school for boys and girls." The nearby St John the Evangelist Church Lyneal with Colemere has a memorial to the dead of World War I, recording the names of 11 men who died from the ecclesiastical parish of Lyneal with Colemere.

Arowry
Arowry

Arowry (Welsh: Yr Owredd) is a village in the community of Hanmer in the rural south-east of Wrexham County Borough, Wales, near the border with England. The origin of its name is unclear but is thought to have a Welsh-language root. It has also been referred to as "Big Arowry", or "Great Arowry", in order to distinguish it from the hamlet of Little Arowry around a mile to the north near Horseman's Green. "Big Arowry" is the recommended name by the Welsh Language Commissioner.Alfred Palmer, the Wrexham historian, noted that the area called Arowry, before enclosure in the late 18th century, was a "great heath" sometimes given the Welsh name "Yr Owredd", and colloquially referred to as "the Rowrey", or "the Arowry". The form "Yr Owredd" was also the name of the mansion of landowner and poet Dafydd ab Edmwnd, which once stood in the area, and was first recorded in c.1490 in the work of Tudur Aled: the English form "Rowri Heath" is first recorded c.1699 by Edward Lhuyd.While this might imply a Welsh origin to the name, Thomas Gwynn Jones, in his discussion of Tudur Aled's work, suggested that the name Owredd was originally derived from a Welsh pronunciation of the English name "Overheath".The commonland of the Arowry, along with several other commons in the area, was drained and enclosed following a 1774 petition by the local landowner Sir Walden Hanmer, afterwards becoming private farmland. A short distance to the east of the village is Arowry Moss, once known as Tir-y-gors, a 3 hectare lowland bog that has now become wooded over, although it remains a wildlife site of county importance. The nineteenth-century philologist Alexander John Ellis studied the dialect of a native of Arowry, John Heatley, as part of his work, published in On Early English Pronunciation, on English dialects. The unusual dialect of the Hanmer area was later studied in the Survey of English Dialects. The village is near the A539 road and is 10 kilometres (6 mi) west of the nearest major town, Whitchurch in Shropshire.