The Moss Valley spur between Wrexham Maelor Hospital and the site of Moss and Pentre Station has now been re-surfaced as a cycle route. The Brymbo branch of the Wrexham, Mold and Connah's Quay Railway was built to directly compete with the GWR line to Brymbo. Although originally planned in the 1860s, legal challenges by the GWR meant that it was finally constructed in the 1880s after a parliamentary bill for further expansion of the WMCQ line was tabled in 1881; the branch was built and opened to freight traffic in stages, with a full passenger service to Brymbo commencing on 1 August 1889. The line left the WMCQ main line near Gwersyllt, and ran through the coal mining district of the Moss Valley, with halts at Moss and Pentre and New Broughton, where it passed under the GWR Brymbo branch before turning to run parallel to it. A small halt was provided at Plas Power, nearly adjacent to the GWR halt: there was a connection between the two lines at this point where there were sidings to Plas Power colliery. The line then headed north to Brymbo on the opposite (western) side of the valley to the GWR route; a trailing connection shortly before the tiny WMCQ Brymbo station led to a short branch to Vron and its colliery. The WMCQ terminus at Brymbo was located in a gloomy, cramped and rather inaccessible spot immediately beneath the vast slag tips on which the furnaces of Brymbo Steelworks had been built. Although the branch handled a reasonable volume of freight, passenger services on the line were never especially successful and the Great Central Railway, which had absorbed the WMCQ, discontinued them on a 'temporary' basis in 1917. They were never restarted. As a result of the Railways Act 1921, the GCR was absorbed by the London and North Eastern Railway, Brymbo becoming its most "westerly" outpost. The branch, sections of which had a 'difficult' combination of sharp curves and steep gradients, was worked by J58, and then by four Kitson & Co. J60 class locomotives based at Wrexham, later being replaced by J94s. Rather surprisingly given its duplication of the GWR route, parts of the WMCQ Brymbo branch remained open under British Railways until as late as 1970. After initial closure in 1954, a section from Gwersyllt to a coal distribution centre at Gatewen was reopened in 1958, while part of the top end of the line, from a reinstated connection with the ex-GWR line at Broughton Forge Junction (Plas Power) to the site of the former WMCQ Brymbo station and on to Brymbo Fishponds Sidings, was not taken out of use until 1970.