25 Places with two stations: 21 Wrexham

Saturday 18th October 2025

Wrexham is another place with two stations that initially didn’t make it on to my list of intended visits for this fortnightly series. Along with Colchester, which also has its main station slightly off-centre from the town’s focal point coupled with a small one platform second station in the town centre, there are no trains serving the latter without also serving the former, making for limited comparisons.

However, finding myself in Wrexham earlier this week for the TrawsCymru Operator Forum (more on this in next Tuesday’s blog), I took the opportunity to explore the town’s two stations and decided there was enough quirkiness to write about, not least that Wrexham Central is a shadow of its former glory days and Wrexham General was at one time two different stations (shades of Reading).

As you can see from this map, Wrexham Central is a dead end single track spur from the main line passing north to south through Wrexham General.

Wrexham General came on the scene first, in 1846 with Wrexham Central following 41 years later in 1887.

General was original two separate stations with Wrexham Exchange located where today’s Platforn 4 stands (as shown in the above photo). It was redefined as one station in 1981 and what then became Platform 4, but formerly Wrexham Exchange, is where trains continue along the single track to and from Wrexham Central which is about three quarters of a mile and a two minutes journey further on around a left hand bend (as shown in the photo below).

This line originally continued south beyond Wrexham Central to Ellsmere but that link closed in 1962 making Wrexham Central a terminus station. Beeching proposed closing the line to Wrexham Central but protests and plans for the town to grow saw the idea dropped.

But the station became unstaffed in 1972, the track was singled in 1973 and extensive changes in 1998 saw the station site and its environs swallowed up into a new retail park (where the line used to continue) resulting in today’s single platform with very limited facilities 400 yards to the west of its original site. Perhaps the most impressive thing are the buffer stops.

The limited facilities incorporate a ticket machine…

… and four bench seats under a canopy.

And an electronic departure sign.

And that’s it.

Trains only spend a few minutes in the tight turnaround on this line which after Wrexham General continues as the Borderlands Line via Shotton (where it crosses the North Wales line) to Bidston where it connects with the Merseyrail network.

As you can see TfW use Class 230 (former District line Underground D78 stock) three car trains to run this service which currently has a rather inconvenient 45 minute frequency.

It had been planned to double the frequency from what was hourly to half hourly but these trains just can’t maintain the necessary speed and acceleration to make for a reliable timetable and realistic turnaround times at the termini. However, TfW has extensive aspirational plans for the route in its recently published Network North Wales proposals including imminently renaming the line from Borderlands to the Wrexham to Liverpool line and improvements to stations on the line in the next 12 months. Not only that, there are proposals for trains to continue to Liverpool with a four-trains-per-hour Metro style frequency by 2035.

Back at Wrexham General there are two through platforms on the Newport-Shrewsbury-Chester line, Platform 1 southbound and Platform 2 northbound, with the latter sharing an island with Platform 3 which links this line from the south to the Bidston line to the north so sees very little, if any use. The Nwtwork North Wales proposals also envisage twice the number of trains to Chester than the current hourly timetable and the remaining sections of single track doubling.

There are also two short south facing bay platforms along side the southern end of Platform 1 which also see little, if any, use.

Platforms 1 and 2 see TfW Class 197 trains on an hourly service north towards Chester then continuing along the North Wales line to Holyhead.

In the southbound direction trains run alternately every two hours each beyond Shrewsbury to either Cardiff or Birmingham International.

The main entrance to the station is through the small area alongside the ticket office…

…leading on to Platform 1.

There’s a rather nice Gourmet Coffee Bar and Kitchen with access from both outside…

…and Platform 1 and some rather comfortable seating.

Toilets are also available on the platform as well as a facility in the coffee bar.

There’s an old style footbridge to take passengers over to Platforms 2, 3 and 4 together with lifts.

Platforms 2 and 3 have a small waiting room…

… with an intriguing hidden nook at the far end…

… where four more seats can be found.

There are also seats and bench type seats on the island platform itself.

Finally, over on Platform 4 (the former Wrexham Exchange)…

…there’s a couple of bus type shelters …

… and some seats in the open.

Access to this platform can also be had direct from the street down a long ramp from the road bridge over the tracks (presumably the old access route when it was a separate station)…

… which explains why there’s a ticket machine located here.

Another ticket machine can be found outside the main entrance as shown earlier.

And that’s about it for Wrexham General other than to reminisce to the time when the short lived but well loved Wrexham and Shropshire Railway provided a direct locomotive hauled train to and from Marylebone from the station between 2008 and 2011.

By a quirky coincidence while I was in Wrexham on Tuesday, BBC Radio 4 was broadcasting the second episode in the new series of Mark Steel’s In Town that evening when he visited Wrexham. It’s another great programme especially his reference to Wrexham General and Wrexham Central and the comment they’re the closest National Rail stations in the country – but I think the closeness of City Thameslink and London Blackfriars beat it.

Roger French

Did you catch the 20 previous blogs in this series? 1: Hertford; 2: Canterbury. 3: Wigan, 4 Dorchester, 5 Windsor, 6 Wakefield, 7 Reddish, 8 Yeovil, 9 Newark-on-Trent, 10 New Mills, 11 Tyndrum, 12 St Albans, 13 Falkirk, 14 Catford, 15 Helensburgh, 16 Gainsborough, 17 Edenbridge, 18 Bicester, 19 Worcester, 20 Epsom and Ewell

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