I live near the Gobowen line and am fascinated when I look at the freight trains (usually about 13 carriages / trailers usually but sometimes almost double that) passing by.
However, I’m nosey so I’d love to know what’s in them.
Am I able to do this? (Without hijacking and looking inside them. Lol)
The train in your photos will be a steel train between south Wales (Margam) and north Wales (Dee Marsh, Shotton) carrying steel coil for processing at Shotton (Tata).
This usually runs several times a week (it used to be several times a day!).
The timber trains are open wagons and it's obvious what the cargo is, as noted above they will be heading for Kronospan at Chirk (usually from Carlisle).
When unloaded these trains often run on to Gobowen to reverse direction using the first bit of the Oswestry line, or carry on to Shrewsbury to turn north.
There is also a flow of coal to the Hanson cement works at Penyffordd, in containers, running roughly weekly.
It used to come from Yorkshire via Chester and not pass Gobowen, but this week I see it comes from Avonmouth via Shrewsbury and will be imported coal.
These are all local flows to NE Wales. The route doesn't normally get freight destined for other places, so is limited to these three flows.
Very occasionally, other freight trains are diverted via Gobowen, eg when the West Coast Main Line via Crewe is closed for engineering work.
As noted above, realtimetrains will show you the origin and destination of freight trains, and you can often guess the cargo from the type of vehicles in the train or the terminals the train uses.
