"A detailed insight into the industries of northeast Wales and how the ready supply of raw materials was key to their expansion." — RailAdvent Rob Shorland-Ball's research for this book, and several visits, convinced him that he was putting together a jigsaw of facts. No previously published account of the area has brought together these stories of iron and steel making, limestone quarrying, coal mining, terra cotta, lead mining, and the railway systems they all needed to move their products to market. There were narrow and standard gauge railways—eighty miles of tracks in the Shotton Steel Works; industrial sites like Brymbo Iron and Steel Works; and since 2003 the Airbus factory which makes 100ft long wings for Airbus 380s that are too long to be moved by rail! A jigsaw indeed and this book puts together the pieces. "This new work provides an overview of how coal, iron ore, limestone and other minerals contributed to the area's economy, the railways that were built to carry them, the growth of the iron and steel industry, and the decline and fall of most of these during the second half of the twentieth century." —West Somerset Railway Association
