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The Chester and Holyhead Railway was incorporated out of a proposal to link Holyhead, the traditional port for the Irish Mail, with London by way of the existing Chester and Crewe Railway, and what is now the West Coast Main Line. Indeed, the carriage of the Irish Mail was always the primary objective of the founding Directors. == The Irish Mail == When Queen Elizabeth I decided to establish a weekly post to Ireland in 1572, the route via Chester and Liverpool was chosen, before being switched four years later to Holyhead, which represented a shorter sea crossing. The weekly post was sufficient when there was an English or British Parliament in London and an Irish Parliament, with urgent messages carried by civil servants, usually on horseback. The post improved slowly, and by 1784 the Turnpike Acts had resulted in improved roads on which a mail coach operated almost daily from London to Holyhead, taking 45 hours to make the journey. With the passing of the Act of Union in 1800, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, elected Irish members of the new United Kingdom Parliament sought the same quality of travel and postal facilities as their fellow members from England, Wales and Scotland. Improvements continued slowly, and by the time Thomas Telford had completed his A5 road with improvements through Shrewsbury, Llangollen, Betws-y-coed, Bangor and his Menai Suspension Bridge in 1826, the London to Holyhead journey was down to under 30 hours. The first steam packet boats had entered service between Holyhead and Dublin in 1819 and soon they were operating out of Liverpool as well. With the coming of the railways, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the London and Birmingham Railway and their combination to form the Grand Junction Railway, there were fast trains from London to Liverpool and fast steam packets from Liverpool to Kingstown (as Dun Laoghaire was then known) with a journey time of 22.5 hours from London to Dublin. From 24 January 1839 the Irish Mail contract was switched to Liverpool. Even before this date the search was on for the shortest route from Dublin to London and this was clearly via Porth Dinllaen on the Llŷn Peninsula. But survey engineers quickly found difficulties in the terrain that might have outweighed any advantages of distance, however they saw this simply as a challenge to be overcome. The great advocate of Porth Dinllaen was Henry Archer, Secretary of the Ffestiniog Railway Company, who engaged the services of Charles Vignoles to survey the route in 1835, although Vignoles produced three alternative routes. Isambard Kingdom Brunel chose quite a different route and was actively surveying via Gloucester and New Quay in Cardigan Bay. Others promoted the merits of the proposed St George's Harbour constructed with a large stone breakwater between the Great Orme Head and the Little Orme Head in Ormes Bay at Llandudno and they were the first to petition Parliament, in 1837, with their St George's Harbour and Railway Bill, which failed. It was against this background that plans for a Chester and Holyhead Railway were prepared and canvassed between 1838 and 1842, almost scuppered in 1843, and eventually given Royal Assent on 4 July 1844 (7 & 8 Vic. cap. lxv). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chester and Holyhead Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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