I remember living in the area and the train would stop at stations like Ruabon and Chirk. This was great on the occasions that friends would visit and preferred not changing and just working on the train, but in reality meant a pretty sluggish journey time.
The obvious lack of a huge population in those sorts of areas was one reason, but in my humble opinion, as a potential user of the service, what finished it off was the dreadful dreadful engineering work at the weekend and crucially the complete lack of comms until a very short time beforehand. I would often compare prices and so on, and the Wrexham and Shropshire line would not even be able to say which trains would be running or how long it would take or what the diversions would be. From memory there were some crackpot diversions making the journey time down to London even longer and then some weekends certain trains wouldn't run at all, meaning getting back on the later Saturday night service was impossible.
I very quickly gave up and just went to Crewe or Chester using Virgin, who were also doing a really good Saturday one day ticket at the time too. If you're planning a day out in London at the weekend, you don't want to wait to the last minute to understand what's happening with the train service - you want to book an advance ticket or at least make concrete plans.
It was a shame, but I think the engineering works, lack of plenty of advance notice presumably from Network Rail, and poor comms was one of a number of factors in their demise. It felt unfair on them to me!
Maybe this time it will be different - but they would need engineering works to be on their side, esp with the rise in leisure travel since Covid.
www.wsmr.co.uk
