Transcribed from the 1922 Woodall, Minshall, Thomas & Co. Ltd. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE STORY OF THE CAMBRIAN
A Biography of a Railway
by
C. P. GASQUOINE
(Editor of the “Border Counties Advertizer.”)
1922:
Printed and Published by Woodall, Minshall, Thomas & Co. Ltd.
(Incorporating Hughes & Son).
Principality Press, Wrexham, and Caxton Press, Oswestry.
PREFACE.
Credit for the inspiration of this book belongs to my friend, Mr. W. R. Hall, of Aberystwyth, who, in one of his interesting series of “Reminiscences” of half a century of Welsh journalism, contributed to the “Cambrian News,” recently expressed his surprise that no one had hitherto attempted to write the history of the Cambrian Railways. With the termination of that Company’s separate existence, on its amalgamation with the Great Western Railway under the Government’s grouping scheme, “the hour” for such an effort seems to have struck; and Mr. Hall’s pointed indication of Oswestry as the most appropriate place where the work could be undertaken, not only by reason of its close connection with the official headquarters of the Cambrian, but because, in a certain newspaper office there lay the files containing so many old records of the railway’s birth and early struggles for existence, even the selection of “the man” appeared so severely circumscribed that to the present writer it virtually amounted to what, in certain ecclesiastical circles, is termed “a call.”
Responsibility for its acceptance, however, and for the execution of the task, with its manifold imperfections and shortcomings, rests entirely with the author, whose only qualification for assuming the rôle of biographer of the Cambrian is the deep interest he has always taken in a subject worthy of a far abler pen. Not even the attempt would have been possible
had it not been for the valuable assistance readily given by many kind friends directly or indirectly associated with the Cambrian Railways.
Special thanks are due, and hereby gratefully acknowledged, to Mr. Samuel Williamson General Manager, not for only much personal trouble taken in supplying information and looking through proof-sheets, but for placing no small portion of the time of some members of his clerical staff at the disposal of the author, who has troubled them on many occasions, but never without receiving prompt and patient response; to other officials and employees, past and present, of the Company for information regarding their several departments, and their personal recollections, including Mr. T. S. Goldsworthy, the senior officer and sole surviving member of the “old guard,” who played their part in the battles of the Parliamentary Committee-rooms of long ago, whose reminiscences of the days of old have proved particularly useful; to the Earl of Powis for permission to inspect the voluminous papers of the late Earl, whose name was so intimately associated with the early development of railway schemes in Montgomeryshire; to the family of the late Mr. David Howell for similar facilities in regard to his papers; and, for the loan of photographs or assistance of varied sort to Colonel Apperley, Mr. E. D. Nicholson, Park Issa, Oswestry, Mr. W. P. Rowlands and Mr. Edmund Gillart, Machynlleth, Mr. Robert Owen, Broad Street, Welshpool, Mr. J. Harold Thomas, Garth Derwen, Buttington, the Misses Ward, Whittington, Miss Mickleburgh, Oswestry, Mr. E. Shone, Oswestry, the Editor of the “Peterborough Advertiser,” the publishers of the “Great Western Magazine,” and others.
The indexing has been compiled by Mr. Kay, Public Librarian, Oswestry, to whom thanks are due for the efficient discharge of a rather irksome duty.
As to the arrangement of the book itself: in tracing the various stages of construction, often simultaneous or overlapping in point of time, of the several separate and formerly independent undertakings into which the Cambrian system was subsequently consolidated, and still further augmented by later local amalgamations, it has been found well-nigh impossible, chronologically, to maintain at once a clear and consecutive story. Recourse has, therefore, been had to the method of dealing with each section of the line in separate chapters, and the same plan applies to some departments of development in later years. But an endeavour has been made to follow, as comprehensively as such circumstances permit, the general course of the Railway’s growth; and it is in the hope that, however imperfectly, it may serve to recal seventy years of struggle, triumph and romance in Welsh railway annals that to Lt.-Col. David Davies, M.P., its last Chairman, and Mr. Samuel Williamson, its last General Manager, and his numerous other friends among the officers and staff of all ranks, the writer begs to dedicate this little story of the Cambrian, in memory of many happy days spent in travelling, as a privileged passenger, along its far-reaching lines.
C. P. G.
“Border Counties Advertizer” Office, Oswestry, 1922.
CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
“No Engineer could succeed without having men about him as highly gifted as himself.”—Robert Stephenson.
I.
When what eventually became the Cambrian Railways was born it was a very tiny baby. Compared with its ultimate frame, it possessed neither arms nor legs, nor even head, and consisted merely of heart and a small part of its trunk. It began “in the air” at Newtown and ended, if possible, in still more ethereal poise, at Llanidloes. Physical junction with existing lines there was none, and the engines—four in number—which drew the coaches that composed those early trains had to be brought by road, from Oswestry, in specially constructed wagons, not without difficulties and adventures, and placed on the metals at the railhead, to live their life and perform their duty in “splendid isolation.” It was only gradually that limb after limb was added, and subsequently constructed railways were incorporated or absorbed, until the consolidated system obtained the rather attenuated proportions with which we are familiar to-day, stretching from Whitchurch, on the Cheshire border, to Aberystwyth, on the shores of Cardigan Bay, with its two chief
subsidiary “sections,” one (including some half dozen miles of the original track) from Moat Lane Junction to Brecon, and another from Dovey Junction to Pwllheli; shorter branches or connecting lines from Ellesmere to Wrexham, Oswestry to Llangynog, Llanymynech to Llanfyllin, Abermule to Kerry, Cemmes Road to Dinas Mawddwy, Barmouth Junction to Dolgelley, and two lengths of narrow gauge line, from Welshpool to Llanfair Caereinion and Aberystwyth to Devil’s Bridge, altogether exactly 300 miles.
Such, in briefest outline, denotes how “the Cambrian” began and what it has grown to be; but there is little virtue in a mere recital of statistics, and the writing of “history,” of the kind once defined by the late Lord Halsbury as “only a string of names and dates” would be no congenial task to the present author. Nor, happily, is it necessary to confine oneself to such barren and unemotional limits. It is not in the record of train miles run, of the number of passengers and the weight of the merchandise carried, or even in the dividends earned, or not earned (though these factors are not without their value to the proprietors) that the chief interest in the story of a railway lies. [2] Very often it is the tale of unending trial and difficulty and even apparent failure which holds for the spectator the largest measure of romance, and such is certainly the case of what, at one time, was, with quite as much sympathetic affection as contempt, popularly called “the poor old Cambrian.” There were times when the difficulties which faced its constructors appeared to be absolutely insuperable. What with the enormous weight of
its cradle, measured in gold, and the continual quarrels of its nurses, the undertaking was well nigh strangled at birth. Even when the line was actually opened for traffic a burden of financial difficulty rested upon Directors and Managers that might have crushed the spirit out of many a stout heart.
Judged by the maturer experience of long years, it is wonderful to think that, even under the most careful management, the Company should have been able to survive its constant buffetings at the hand of Fate, but survive it has, and by eternal patience and unfailing perseverance these many troubles were at length overcome, and if to-day the railway offers facilities and comforts to the travelling public that stand the test of comparison with such as are provided by the great trunk lines of England and Scotland, it is no small tribute to those who have worked long and labouring to bring its services to their present high standard of efficiency.
But of the Cambrian as we know it to-day there will be something more to be said presently. Biography, by time-honoured custom, if not necessity, begins with birth and parentage; and, though corporate bodies may often experience some difficulty about laying claim to a “lang pedigree,” even a railway company cannot come into existence without considerable pre-natal labour.
Among its parents the Cambrian possessed some men of rare grit and determination. Prominent among them was one who ranks high among the makers of modern Wales, whose name has become a household word not only in his native land, but wherever Welshmen congregate throughout the world, and is still, by happy coincidence, intimately associated, in the third generation, with the Cambrian to-day. The story of David Davies of Llandinam
has been fully told in other pages, [4] but it is so closely woven around the romance of the railway which he did so much to bring into being that no record of that undertaking would be complete without some reference to it, however brief. Born at a small holding called Draintewion, perched on the hillside overlooking the Severn Vale near Llandinam, the eldest of a family of nine children, on December 18, 1818,—“three eighteens,” as he used in later life jocularly to remark—his boyhood was spent on the little plot of land tilling its rich soil, or helping his father, in the work of sawing timber into planks, a commodity for which public demand was then rapidly increasing. His only schooling was received in a little seminary carried on in the village church, and that wonderful educational institution of rural Wales, the Sunday School. But at the age of eleven the desk was deserted for the saw bench, and the rest of his instruction was derived at “the University of Observation, in which he took not a mere ‘pass’ but very high ‘honours’.” A keen observation of human nature, a shrewd judgment of men and beast, and a ready aptitude for application of native wit to the problems of life developed David Davies into the man of wealth and power he ultimately became. Even in his school
days, however, these latent traits were not unobservable. It is recorded that “he was the winner of every game.” He may have had a generous portion of what men call “luck,” but to it was added the still more valuable element of industry and perseverance and healthy ambition. He knew how to take the chances which came his way, which is probably the secret of success with many who “get on.” When opportunity offered to enter a new path he readily seized it, and from the hewer of wood he became the modest contractor, and ultimately the greater builder of bridges, docks and railways.
Passengers travelling along the Cambrian line from Moat Lane Junction to Llanidloes, may notice, at Llandinam, the roadway which runs below the church, and crosses the river on an embankment to the station. The construction of that highway was the first contract which David Davies held, and it stands to-day, hard by the statue of him which has since been erected, as a monument of his self-reliant zeal and sound workmanship. Other contracts followed, including that for the construction of Oswestry Smithfield, and it was during one of his visits to that town that Mr. Davies formed a friendship which led to a partnership that, in its turn, played a potent part in the making of the Cambrian.
For in Oswestry there lived Mr. Thomas Savin, who had been born, in 1826, at Llwynymaen, and was a partner in a mercer’s business with Mr. Edward Morris (who afterwards purchased and sold the Van Mine near Caersws), under the style of Messrs. Morris and Savin. Mr. Savin’s mind, however, was not entirely concentrated on measuring cloth and calico. He took a keen interest in the life of the town, and was an energetic supporter of local institutions. Elected to the Town Council in 1856, he was
mayor in 1863, and appointed alderman in 1871, an office he retained to the end of his varied life. But these honours had yet to come. Already, at the time of which we are now writing, Mr. Savin had visions of a larger enterprise beyond the boundaries of his native borough.
Like many large and generous-hearted men, Mr. Savin was very impetuous and impatient of delays. On one occasion, it is related, when still a mercer at Oswestry, he drove over to a Welsh border market town to sell his wares. It was the custom there for farmers to decline to look at any other business till the sale of the live stock was disposed of, and the market being loth to start and Mr. Savin eager to be home again, he rushed into the arena and startled the company present by buying a thousand sheep. This was before he became associated with railway pioneering, but it is a characteristic example of that dramatic impulsiveness which led to his subsequent success—and failure.
Caught by the spirit of venture and enthusiasm, which had swept over the country after the successful opening of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway in 1830, his thoughts had begun to turn to railway production, and the meeting with the young Montgomeryshire road and bridge builder opened the looked for door. In a room over the tobacconist shop now occupied by Mr. Richards, opposite the Post Office, in Church Street, Oswestry, and close to the premises in which, some fifteen or sixteen years earlier another notable man, Shirley Brooks, afterwards editor of “Punch,” had toiled as a lawyer’s article pupil to his uncle, Mr. Charles Sabine, Mr. Davies and Mr. Savin were brought together by Mr. George Owen, himself destined to play no small part in the planning of the Cambrian. A man of Kent, native of Tunbridge Wells, Mr. Owen had begun his business career
in the office of Mr. Charles Mickleburgh, land surveyor, agent and enclosure commissioner, of Montgomery, one of whose daughters he subsequently married. He worked side by side with another young engineer, of whom we shall hear more presently,—Mr. Benjamin Piercy, under whose initial leadership, Mr. Owen, as resident engineer, was to serve the local railway for many a long year. Nor was that the only capacity in which his gifts were displayed. Making Oswestry his home, he became a member of the Town Council in 1860, mayor in 1864 and 1865, and alderman in 1874. For twenty years he was a member of the General Purposes Committee, served as borough and county magistrate, and was a member of the School Board from its inception, and chairman from 1891 till his death in 1901. Indeed, there was no interest in the town,—administrative, commercial and recreative,—in which he did not fill a conspicuous role. But, perhaps, of all his services to the community, none was more opportune or more prolific of far-reaching results than that happy inspiration of introducing Messrs. Davies and Savin.
II.
Still, it takes more than a couple of contractors, however enthusiastic, to construct a railway. Though the more visible, the organiser of the labour is not the only parent. Not less essential, in his creative function, is the capitalist; and even the powerful combination of capitalist and contractor is insufficient to carry matters to a practical conclusion without the expert guidance of the engineer. Nevertheless, Messrs. Davies and Savin, as the new partnership was termed, had not long to wait before their opportunity arrived.
The great “railway mania” which reached its climax on that notable Sunday, November 30th, 1845, to be followed by
the catastrophic bursting of the bubble, had left men rather sobered in their outlook upon the future possibilities of speculation in this alluring direction. It had witnessed the formulation of no fewer than 1,263 separate railway schemes, involving an (hypothetical) expenditure of 560 millions sterling, of which 643 got no further than the issue of a prospectus, while over 500 went through all the necessary stages of being brought before Parliament and 272 actually became Acts—“to the ruin of thousands who had afterwards to find the money to fulfil the engagements into which they had so rashly entered.”
Amongst these was a Bill for converting the Montgomeryshire Canal into a railway line, for which an Act was passed in 1846, but it was a hare-brained scheme and soon came to nought. Other proposals, however, developed into what promised, and have since proved, to be highly profitable enterprises. The western Midlands and North Wales had been linked by the line from Shrewsbury to Chester, which Mr. Henry Robertson, M.P., for the former town and afterwards for the County of Merioneth, in which his residence, Palé, near Corwen, was situate, had carried over the great viaducts of Chirk and Cefn. From Chester, Mr. Robert Stephenson, even more daring, had flung his extension of the North Western system, by way of
“The magic Bridge of Bangor
Hung awful in the sky.” [8]
across the Menai Straits into Anglesey and so to Holyhead. The air was again thick, and to become thicker, with new
adventures. Hardly a valley in North or Central Wales but had its ardent advocates of connecting lines. Within a short time newspaper columns were to be flooded with prospectuses of all sorts of schemes. Parliamentary committee rooms buzzed with forensic eloquence about the advantages and disadvantages of this or that route. Expert witnesses swore this, that, or anything else, as expert witnesses generally will, provided, that like the gentlemen who question and cross-question them, they are sufficiently briefed. In vain did the secluded Lake Poet protest:
“Is there no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault?”
The iron road was to come, and come it did, all conquering and, not so unbeneficial, after all, in its rule.
Amidst this welter of proposals and counter-proposals there emerged, sometime during 1852 a scheme, propounded by Mr. Bethell, of Westminster for constructing a railway connecting the existing line at Shrewsbury with Aberystwyth. It was to run by way of the Rea Valley, through Minsterley, and to strike the Severn Valley again in the neighbourhood of Montgomery, whence it was to continue through Newtown and Llanidloes. This was quickly followed by another for a line from Oswestry to Newtown, which was projected under Shrewsbury and Chester Railway auspices. To the latter Mr. Bethell replied by transferring his scheme to the North Western Company, whose engineers remodelled it. With a view to driving any rival Montgomeryshire scheme out of the field, the proposed new line was diverted from the Rea Valley to pass by way of Criggion and Welshpool to Newtown, with a branch from Criggion to Oswestry, and between Newtown and Aberystwyth it was altered to go by Machynlleth, instead of Llanidloes.
This sort of strategy, however, only seemed to stimulate the men of Montgomeryshire to fresh determination to show their independence, and in this they had the adventitious aid of a very influential neighbour, Mr. George Hammond Whalley.
Mr. Whalley was a very remarkable man. A native of Gloucester, according to “Debrett,” he was a lineal descendant of Edward Whalley (first cousin to Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden), who signed the warrant for the execution of Charles I. At the University College, London, he carried off first prize in rhetoric and logic, afterwards was called to the bar, for some years went the Oxford Circuit and acted as Assistant Tithe Commissioner, and Examiner of Private Bills for Parliament. He lived at Plas Madoc, Ruabon, was a deputy lieutenant for Denbighshire and a magistrate for that county, Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire. In 1853 he acted as High Sheriff of Carnarvonshire, and at the time of the Crimean War he volunteered the services of the troop of Denbighshire Yeomanry Cavalry of which he was Captain and received the thanks of the War Office. Some years earlier, during the Irish famine, he established fisheries on the west coast of Ireland, and, in his own yacht, explored and ascertained the position of the fishing banks. The electors of Leominster declined to return him to Parliament in 1845, as did also the Montgomery Boroughs in 1852; but later that year he was elected for Peterborough, unseated on petition, re-elected the next year and again unseated. He unsuccessfully contested the same constituency in 1857, but was elected in May 1859 and sat till his death in 1878, during his Parliamentary career devoting a good deal of attention to the reform of private bill procedure on which he carried a not unimportant measure. But he was no mere meticulous lawyer. His
frantic espousal of the Protestant cause, supposed by the timid in the middle of last century to be in some danger in England, earned him a good deal of notoriety and a popular name. Hardly more eccentric was the warm support he gave to the cause of Arthur Orton in his claim to the title and estate of Sir Roger Tichborne. On one of the last visits he paid to Oswestry he called to see a friend. As he was leaving his friend’s office he suddenly turned round and asked “Do you believe in the Claimant?” The reply was an emphatic negative. “Ah,” exclaimed the departing visitor, “you will come to!”
But if Mr. Whalley was a bad prophet in this respect, his instinct did not always mislead him. He believed in himself, which was not only a more substantial faith, but more to the point in this narrative, for it enabled him, by dint of self-assurance, largely to dominate, and occasionally to domineer, the railway world of Montgomeryshire and the adjacent counties and to contribute in no small measure to the successful accomplishment of several local schemes.
Conspicuous among them was the Llanidloes and Newtown. Though an isolated link in itself, it was intended to form part of a chain that was to stretch from Manchester and the industrial north to Milford Haven, a famous Welsh seaport, and this dream was constantly in the mind of local promoters whenever and wherever such sectional schemes were discussed. On October 30th, 1852, a meeting was held at Llanidloes, with Mr. Whalley in the chair, at which the project was cordially adopted, a committee formed to further its achievement by raising the necessary subscriptions, and arrangements made for carrying the fiery cross of propaganda to Newtown and Rhayader, and as far afield as Aberystwyth. On this effective errand Mr. Whalley and his coadjutors stumped the
countryside, and “inn bills” began to form no inconsiderable item in the promoters’ balance sheets. But nothing can be accomplished in this world without effort and expenditure; and to the missionaries’ warning words against “the evil of conceding to an overbearing leviathan neighbour any privileges calculated to endanger the independence of their little company,” we are informed by a chronicler of the day, “the county nobly responded, and petitions were sent from every district, praying for the recognition by Parliament of the principles so ably enunciated by Mr. Whalley.”
The “little company” had, indeed, good reason to be apprehensive; but fortune favoured its course. Before this onslaught, even the “overbearing leviathan” quailed. After long and costly struggle in the Parliamentary committee rooms, accommodation was reached, and in the House of Commons the Montgomeryshire promoters’ scheme passed with flying colours; but an unfortunate error, by which the levels were proved to be some 18 feet below the Severn water, wrecked it in the Lords. In August, 1853, however, the scheme received Parliamentary sanction, and out of the long list of “provisional directors” appointed the previous year, the first board was formed. They were:—Mr. Whalley, chairman; Mr. W. Lefeaux, vice-chairman; Alderman E. Cleaton, Llanidloes; Alderman Richard Holmes, Llanidloes; Mr. Wm. Lloyd, Newtown; Mr. Edward Morris, Oxon, Shrewsbury; Mr. T. E. Marsh, Llanidloes, and Mr. T. Prickard, Dderw, Radnorshire. Mr. Rice Hopkins was the engineer, Mr. T. P. Prichard, general manager, and Mr. John Jenkins, secretary. Mr. Jenkins, however, soon transferred his services to the office of auditor, and was succeeded by Mr. Thomas Hayward.
III.
And so, with eager hearts, directors looked forward to a rosy future. It is interesting to recall what, in their opinion, the financial prospects of the line were. Larger schemes loomed in ambitious minds, but, even confined to the local line along the Severn valley, the estimated revenue was as follows:—
Passengers £2,350
Coal £750
Lead, Copper, and Barytes Ore £1,700
Timber (chiefly used in working the mines) £900
Iron, Powder, and other articles used by miners £75
Lime for Agricultural and other purposes £900
Corn, Flour, and other Agricultural Produce £600
Cattle, Sheep, and other animals £300
Wool and Woollen Manufactures £225
General Merchandise and Shop Goods £250
Building Stone, Tiles, Bricks, etc. £200
Total £8,250
Estimating working expenses at 50 per cent., that left a surplus of £4,125, being nearly 7 per cent. per annum on £60,000, the required capital. With such a scheme the majority of the local owners readily expressed their agreement, and arrangements were made for cutting of the first sod, in a field which was to form the site of the Llanidloes station, on October 3rd, 1855. Mrs. Owen, of Glansevern, was invited to perform the ceremony, but, owing to what she regarded as a premature announcement of the fact in the “Shrewsbury Chronicle,” that lady sent an advertisement to the journal announcing the postponement of the function. Pages of the
Company’s minute book were devoted to expressions of the Board’s “utmost astonishment” and demands for explanations. Mrs. Owen was at no loss for material to furnish equally voluminous reply, the pith of which was that she was simply inspired by a desire to obtain time, both to secure the attendance of her influential friends and to inform herself of the financial position of the undertaking.
It was all a storm in a tea-cup, but it was a very severe storm while it lasted; and Mr. Whalley had to cut the sod himself, in a deluge of rain, taking occasion, however, in doing so, to express, in graceful terms, the disappointment felt at the absence of one “who had done so much to introduce improved means of communication through the county,” a reference equally gracefully acknowledged by letter from Glansevern a few days later. “Up to the present period,” wrote Mrs. Owen, “we have been strangers in this part of the county to the preparations necessary for inaugurating a railway, and it should not, therefore, be wondered at if our first attempt should not have been attended with perfect success; misapprehension, excess of zeal and inexperience might all lead to mistakes and errors, and it is not, perhaps, possible for us all to escape censure.”
Perhaps not. At any rate, it was a philosophic conclusion, and it enabled the Board, with unruffled feathers, to proceed to the business of receiving tenders for the construction of the line. Out of seven, the lowest was that of Mr. David Davies, who was, moreover, prepared to accept part payment in shares, an arrangement which, later, paved the way to the process of leasing these local railways to the contractors, that became almost a custom. Hardly, however, had these preliminaries been successfully negotiated, when Mr. Rice Hopkins died, and after a temporary agreement with one of his
relatives to carry on in an advisory capacity, the Board proceeded to select a successor out of four “persons who presented themselves as eligible for this purpose.”
Their choice was easily made. The line was being built by a local contractor. Fate was now to throw up a new engineer, whose claims were not less obvious on similar grounds. A native of Trefeglwys, Mr. Benjamin Piercy had, from an early age, taken great interest in railway planning, and, though this branch of the profession did not directly touch his daily routine, he devoted many leisure hours to its study. In his journeys through Wales he was impressed with the necessity of opening out its valleys to the great railway world that was developing beyond the English border, and when Mr. Henry Robertson began to make his surveys of the Shrewsbury and Chester line, Mr. Piercy became one of his assistants. So diligently did the young man discharge his duties here that, it is recorded, he was the means of preventing the loss of a year in obtaining the Act for the making of this line.
It was natural, therefore, that, when the Rea Valley line was being mooted, he should be engaged to prepare the Parliamentary plans. It was in this connection that an untoward incident occurred, which throws some light on the tremendous rivalry that existed among the promoters of various railway schemes and the means that were sometimes adopted to thwart the progress of antagonistic proposals. Mr. Piercy had, with great energy, got his plans ready and taken them to London, but they were surreptitiously removed from his room at the hotel, and the matter was hung up for a year. In the meantime, as we have already noted, the line of route was changed. In the following year, however, he duly deposited the plans for the railway from Shrewsbury to Welshpool, with a branch to Minsterley, already mentioned. Although strongly
opposed, at every stage, including Standing Orders, Mr. Piercy succeeded in carrying the Bill through both Houses, and it received the Royal assent. It was in the Select Committees on this Bill that he first made his reputation as a witness in Parliamentary Committees. After this he was engaged upon nearly all the projects for introducing independent railways into Wales, all of them meeting with fierce opposition. For several days consecutively he was as a witness under cross-examination by the genial Mr. Serjeant Merewether, and other eminent counsel, but so little headway were they able to make against Mr. Piercy that, upon one occasion, when a Committee passed a Bill of his, Mr. Merewether held up his brief-bag and asked the Committee whether they would not give that too to Mr. Piercy. [16]
In 1858 Mr. Piercy was formally appointed engineer to the Company. With the assistance of Mr. George Owen, the cordial co-operation of Messrs. Davies and Savin, and under the enthusiastic leadership of Mr. Whalley, he was destined to carry these undertakings into being, and to nurture them in their infancy, and thus to join the little group of pioneer workers who, in their several capacities, may, in special degree, be termed the parents of the Cambrian.
CHAPTER II. A BIRTHDAY PARTY.
“A birthday:—and now a day that rose
with much of hope, with meaning rife—
A thoughtful day from dawn to close.”—Jean Ingleow.
With the advent of the young Montgomeryshire engineer, and his cordial co-operation with the Montgomeryshire contractor, the public began eagerly to count the days, or at any rate, the months, before the due arrival of the first Montgomeryshire railway. The prospects of a punctual delivery were eminently propitious. In his first report, Mr. Piercy was able to announce substantial progress with the work, which was being carried out by Messrs. Davies and Savin, “at a cost below that of any railway yet brought into operation.” True, there were one or two inevitable set-backs. One of the engines which had arrived by road, and been set on the rails at Newtown, refused properly to perform its duty; but, fortunately, a Mr. Howell, of Hawarden, who knew all about the intricate interior of these new-fangled monsters, happened to be staying at Llanidloes, and he was called in to diagnose and advise, with effective result.
A more serious problem was the revision of the terms of the lease of the line to Messrs. Davies and Savin, which a committee of shareholders were busily engaged in attempting to carry forward. Complications of another sort led Mr. Piercy
to tender his resignation, which, being somewhat peremptorily refused, he withdrew. Still further anxiety and considerable expense was involved in the prosecution of Parliamentary application for power to extend the line from the originally designed terminus at Newtown to the Shropshire Union Canal; for, though it was only a matter of some quarter of a mile, it was strenuously opposed in both Houses. Such were the distractions which beset railway building in those days; but enthusiasm and determination still triumphed, and the work proceeded along the line with sufficient rapidity to admit its being opened for mineral traffic on April 30th, 1859. At the very last moment trouble was experienced in obtaining the necessary certificate of the Board of Trade for passenger traffic, but that precious document came to hand on August 9th, and, with more fortunate outcome than on a previous occasion, Mrs. Owen, of Glansevern, was invited to perform the pleasing duty of declaring the line open.
The day fixed was Wednesday, August 31st, and a local newspaper gives us some account of the proceedings:—“Preparations were made on an extensive scale, and the day was ushered in by cannon firing, bell-ringing, and the hearty congratulations of the people of the town, with their country friends, who flocked in to take part in the proceedings. The houses were elegantly decorated with flags and banners, flowers and evergreens, and a variety of mottoes, more or less appropriate. Amongst others we noticed, on the Old Market Hall (which, by the way, it was a charity to hide from the gaze of strangers), a profusion of flags, with a large banner in the centre, ‘Hail, Star of Brunswick.’ The Red Lion exhibited a local tribute to its friend, by placing on the door ‘Welcome, Whalley, champion of our rights.’ The Railway Station was profusely decorated, and the Queen’s Head displayed an
elegant archway of leaves and flowers. The Trewythen Arms was also gaily covered with flags, and numbers of private houses displayed a variety of gay decorations. The cold and wet state of the weather in no way damped the ardour of the men of Montgomeryshire, and they were rewarded by a speedy dispersion of clouds, and the grateful warmth of the noonday sun. Llanidloes was all alive; business was entirely suspended and soon after 9 o’clock a large crowd collected near the public rooms, where a procession was formed, headed by the Plasmadoc Brass Band, and accompanied in the following order by:—
The Mayor (W. Swancott, Esq.), and the Corporation consisting of Messrs. R. Homes, E. Clayton, T. Davies, T. F. Roberts, D. Snead; L. Minshall, Pugh, J. Jarman, Hamer, J. Mendus Jones,
Flag.
Banner,—‘Whither Bound?’ ‘To Milford.’
Streamer. Banner. Streamer.
(With the inscription):
‘G. H. Whalley, whose unceasing exertions are now crowned with success.’
Mr. G. H. Whalley, Chairman.
Deputy Chairman and Secretary, Directors.
Banner,—‘The spirited contractors, Messrs. Davies & Savin.’
Streamer. Streamer.
Banner,—‘Our Esteemed Patroness, Mrs. A. W. Owen.’
Mrs. Owen followed in a carriage.
Guests and Shareholders.
Ladies (two and two).
Gentlemen (two and two).
Streamer. Streamer.
Banner,—‘Prosperity to the Towns of Llanidloes and Newtown.’
Excavators (with bannerets).
Flag,—‘Live and let Live.’
The Public.
“The procession was marshalled by Mr. Marpole Lewis, and after parading the streets, was met by Mrs. Owen, of Glansevern, who was accompanied by some lady friends and Mr. Brace, and at another point by Mr. Whalley, the chairman of the company. These arrivals were acknowledged with vociferous cheering. The procession, like a rolling snowball, gained bulk as it proceeded, and before it reached the station, comprehended a very large proportion of the inhabitants,—ladies and gentlemen,—with a good sprinkling of their neighbours. At the station there was a considerable delay, awaiting the arrival of the train from Newtown. At last it made its appearance, and the band struck up ‘See the Conquering Hero comes,’—an air far more appropriate when applied to the ‘locomotive’ than to one-half of the heroes to whom it has hitherto done honour. The Mayor of Llanidloes, with the Corporation, Mrs. Owen and party, and Mr. Whalley, accompanied by a very large number of the inhabitants, then took their seats, and amidst the cheers of those left behind, and counter cheers of the passengers, the train moved off and proceeded slowly towards Newtown. [20]
“The train arrived shortly after 12 o’clock, when the procession re-formed and escorted the Mayor and Corporation of Llanidloes, Mrs. Owen, of Glansevern, Mr. Whalley, and other visitors, to Newtown Hall, where an elegant déjeuner
had been provided by Dr. Slyman. The decorations at Newtown Hall were chaste and beautiful. The verandah at the front, was tastefully ornamented with flowers and evergreens, surmounted by a number of elegant fuschias, in the centre of which stood out a prettily worked ‘Prince of Wales’ Feathers.’ A variety of flags were placed around the pleasure ground, which gave a very striking effect to the scene.”
After the party had partaken of refreshments, there were toasts and mutual congratulations, and the procession tramped back to the station.
“Again there was a little delay, awaiting the train from Llanidloes (says our chronicler), and it was half-past three o’clock before The Train of the day fairly started. Filling the carriages and trucks was no joke. Admirable arrangements had been made, and the ladies were first accommodated with seats. One or two gentlemen did attempt to take their place before this arrangement was fully carried out, but they were very unceremoniously brought out again, amidst the ironical cheers of the outsiders. At last the forty-eight trucks and carriages were loaded, and, at a moderate estimate, we should say, 3,000 people were in the train. The two new engines, The Llewelyn and The Milford, were attached to the carriages, and were driven by Mr. T. D. Roberts and Mr. T. E. Minshall. Although the train was so heavily laden with passengers, there was a large crowd of people left to cheer as it slowly passed out of the Station. The appearance of this monster train was magnificent. More than 2,000 of the passengers were in open trucks, and at certain points, where there was a curve in the line, and a good sight could be obtained, the train, as it wound its way through the valley, presented a scene not easily to be erased from the memory.
“Soon after four o’clock Llanidloes Station was reached, and the passengers alighted amidst the shouts of the inhabitants, who had come to welcome them. A large circle was formed in the field adjoining the Station, and Mr. Whalley introduced to those assembled Mrs. Owen, of Glansevern, who declared the line to be opened.”
It hardly required her stirring words to enlist the enthusiasm of the company concerning the economic change which the railways were to bring to Wales. Derelict acres were to be brought into cultivation; “the very central town of the ancient Principality,” in which that ceremony was taking place, was to become the capital of a new prosperity, and as for Mr. Whalley, were not that day’s proceedings “a chapter more honourable than any wreath of laurel that could be won on the battle field by success in war?” The plaudits of the assembled confirmed the sentiment, and “a rush was then made for the tent where the luncheon was provided. Here again the ladies had the same proper attention paid to them; the sterner sex was kept out until they could be accommodated with seats. After a short delay the tent was well filled with visitors, and upwards of 300 sat down to lunch. Grace was said by the Rector of Llanidloes, and for a season the clatter of knives and forks was the only sound to be heard.”
Small wonder! For the afternoon was well advanced, and the time-table had gone rather awry. But that did not in the least damp the ardour of the company. Refreshed by their belated meal, more toasts were honoured, more speeches made, and the future continued to assume the most roseate hue. The district, declared one orator, was destined to become “the abode of smiling happiness,” and Newtown and Llanidloes “the haunts and hives of social industry.” It was, said another, the first link in a chain “which must, ere long, form
one of the greatest and most important trunk lines in the kingdom.” “People,” exclaimed a third, “laughed at it because it had no head or tail”; but let the scoffers wait and see! With all these glowing anticipations, proceedings became so protracted that the ladies had to withdraw, but the gentlemen went on drinking toasts with undiminished energy. They drank to the Chairman; they drank to the Secretary; they drank to the Engineer, and the Contractors, and the Bankers who had lent them the money, and to the success of the other railways springing up around them, including the Mid-Wales, the first sod of which was to be cut in a few days’ time, with what strange accompaniment will be noted in a subsequent chapter. Not until the health of the Press,—“may its perfect independence ever expose abuses and advocate what is just, through evil and through good report,”—had been duly honoured did the company disperse.
The workmen, too, were entertained, with good fare and more speeches. Salvers and cake baskets were presented to Messrs. Davies and Savin. Master Edward Davies, aged 5, and Master Tom Savin, aged 6, were held up aloft, and presented with watches, and the cheering, which had gone on almost continuously for hours, broke forth afresh. One of the workmen, who was also, at any rate, in the opinion of his colleagues, something of a poet, stepped forward, and, “amidst roars of laughter and tremendous cheering,” sang his thanks as follows:—
Well now we’ve got a railway,
The truth to you I’ll tell,
To be opened in August,
The people like it well;
We’ve heard a deal of rumour
O’er all the country wide,
We’ll never get a railway,
The people can’t provide.Well now we have the carriages,
For pleasure trips to ride;
The Milford it shall run us,
And Henry lad shall drive;
There’s also Jack the stoker,
So handy and so free,
He lives now at Llandiman,
A buxom lad is he.We have a first rate gentleman
Who does very nigh us dwell,
And he has got a partner,
The people like him well;
Look at the trucks my boys,
Their names you’ll plainly see;
They’ve took another Railway,
There’s plenty of work for we.Well now our gen’rous masters
Do handsomely provide
A store of meat and drink my boys,
Come out and take a ride;
For we are in our ribbons,
And dress’d so neat and trim;
Drink up my charming Sally,
We’ll fill it to the brim.When these few days are over,
The navvies they will part,
And go back to their gangers
With blithe and cheerful heart;
And Jack he will be hooting,
And getting drunk full soon;
I wish there was a railway
To be opened every moon.And now I have to finish,
And shall conclude my song;
I hope and trust my good friends,
I’ve stated nothing wrong;
All you young men and maidens,
That are so full of play,
I hope you’ll all take tickets
On that most glorious day.
“When the song was concluded, Colonel Wynn purchased the first copy, for which the fortunate bard received a shilling. Several other gentlemen followed this example, and the poet must have regretted that his stock in trade was so limited.
“During the latter part of the proceedings, several had left the enclosure to join the merry dance, to the strains of the Welshpool Band, in the adjoining field. We cannot use the usual stock phrase of the penny-a-liner and say to ‘trip it on the light fantastic toe,’ for in several instances a pair of stalwart navvies might be seen in anything but dancing pumps kicking out most gloriously. In another part of the field, a party were deeply engaged in an exciting game of football. All was mirth and jollity. From the oldest to the youngest, the richest to the poorest, every one seemed to try to get as much enjoyment out of the evening as possible, and if there were any grumblers to be found at Messrs. Davies and Savin’s monster picnic, the fault must have been with themselves.
“The same evening rejoicings were being kept up at Llanidloes. All the school children of the place were feasted in the tent. Mr. Whalley (the ‘champion of the people’s rights,’ as the flag had it) was chaired through the town, and the evening was finished by a ball. And on the following day, several loaves of bread and gallons of porter were sent by Messrs. Davies and Savin to the poor people of Llandinam.” Finally, a medal was struck in commemoration of the event, and presented to the workmen.
Thus, sixty-three years ago, did the community, already conscious of the momentous influence the steam engine was exerting upon the social and economic condition of the countryside, but yet to discover the not less remarkable potentialities of the electric or the petrol spark applied to the problems of transport, herald the birth of the infant Cambrian.
CHAPTER III. EARLY DEVELOPMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES.
“We may perceive plenty of wrong turns taken at cross roads, time misused or wasted, gold taken for dross and dross for gold, manful effort mis-directed, facts misread, men misjudged. And yet those who have felt life no stage play, but a hard campaign with some lost battles, may still resist all spirit of general insurgence in the evening of their day.”—Viscount Morley of Blackburn.
Though one or two earlier bubbles, blown by eager railway promoters, had burst almost as they left the bowl of the pipe, the issue of the prospectus of the Montgomeryshire Railways Company, in 1852, not unnaturally inspired new hope in the border counties of some extension of already projected lines in the locality. At Oswestry, in particular, there was a rapidly growing feeling that such a development was overdue, and they looked with eager eyes towards the possibility of forging a connecting link with the system growing up in the heart of Powysland. The Shrewsbury and Chester Railway, soon to become part of the Great Western, had opened its branch to the busy Shropshire market centre under the hills at the beginning of 1849,—the year which saw the birth of the Oswestry Market and of the “Oswestry Advertizer,” which, in its earlier years, was to devote so many pages to the record of the making of the Cambrian. But beyond Oswestry travellers had to proceed by coach. The
“Royal Oak,” leaving the town daily at one o’clock, arrived at Newtown about five. Goods were carried by more ponderous road transport, and it is rather astonishing to recal that as late as 1853 dogs were employed as draught animals, and local records include the circumstance of the death of a “respected tradesman” by a fall from his horse, caused by the animal’s “fright at one of the carts drawn by the dogs, which are much too often seen on the roads in this neighbourhood.” Legislation was soon to prohibit this custom, and railways to make it unnecessary.
It was, then, in an Oswestry of very different social habits to those of to-day that, on June 23rd, 1853, the townspeople assembled at the call of the Mayor, Mr. William Hodges, to consider the question of a possible extension of the “Montgomeryshire Railway,” in their direction, which was declared by resolution to be the “only scheme before Parliament capable of effecting this most desirable object.”
But railways are not built by resolution alone, or the whole countryside would soon have become heavy with steam. As a matter of fact, it soon was, but not the sort of steam which drives locomotives or urges on the progress of practical railway construction. Ever since 1844, reliance had been placed in the possibility of assistance from one or both of the great lines which already had access to the Welsh border. Hope was first centred in the North Western, which had designs on a line from Shrewsbury into Montgomeryshire, but, in the Oswestry area, wistful eyes turned towards Paddington, and in propitiation of expected favours to come, four men with Great Western interests,—Mr. W. Ormsby-Gore, who became its first chairman; Sir Watkin, who later succeeded him in the chair; Col. Wynn, M.P., and Mr. Rowland James Venables,—were placed on the Oswestry and Newtown Board. The Earl
of Powis, though a “North Westerner,” was found to be not without ready desire to look at things all round. He was for a line to Shrewsbury, and also a line to Oswestry, but not to Oswestry alone. Even the line to Oswestry, according to North Western notions, was to be a branch either from Garthmyl or Criggion, according to whether the Shrewsbury and Montgomeryshire line went by the Rea Valley or by Alberbury, and that was not at all to Oswestrian taste. In the end, however, his lordship agreed to support the Oswestry project, and to take the value of his land,—some £10,000,—in shares, provided the possessor of Powis Castle was allowed to nominate a director, as the owner of Wynnstay was on the Great Western Board. The condition was readily granted, and the Oswestry and Newtown Bill, freed from North Western opposition, was allowed to pass. It obtained Royal Assent on June 26th, 1855, and the first general meeting was held at Welshpool on July 21st of that year.
Local rivalries, however, were not so easily dispelled. Welshpool’s impartiality as between the Shrewsbury and the Oswestry lines was anathema at the latter town, where Mr. Whalley, speaking for nearly an hour and a half, readily persuaded a great meeting to register its insistence on the Oswestry scheme as an extension of the Llanidloes and Newtown, and so form another link in the chain that was to bind Manchester and Milford. Anyhow, Oswestry must be made “the initial town and not Newtown.” In support of this the local promoters looked for substantial aid from the Great Western. But that company proved singularly unready to render any assistance. “Not only,” said Mr. Abraham Howell, in giving evidence before Lord Stanley’s Committee some years later, “did the Great Western not aid in the capital for the Oswestry, but they did not support the Shrewsbury.
On the contrary they opposed it with all their efforts at every step. They also, by a manœuvre which their position of power over the Oswestry Company and their railway experience enabled them to carry out, succeeded in separating the Shrewsbury from the main line, and causing it to drift into the hands of the North Western. They, on the day of, or immediately before the Wharncliffe meeting of the Oswestry Company, got their friends to pay into the bankers in respect of their shares, and give their proxies to the extent of the ¼th in money, against the clauses in the Shrewsbury bill, by which it was intended to connect it with the Oswestry. By this means they cut off from the Welsh line their head and outlet at Shrewsbury, leaving them with the Oswestry head only, to which place they, the Great Western, alone had access, and therefore, under their exclusive power; a result which proved highly detrimental to the Oswestry and the Welshpool lines. During the five years from 1855 to 1859 the advantage given to the Great Western interest placed our company practically under their control.”
Small wonder that public impatience began to show signs of strain. Cynical allusions appeared in the Press. “The only danger in making oneself liable for new schemes,” wrote one captious critic, “arises from the possibility of their being proceeded with.” Not even the “glorious news” of the fall of Sebastopol sufficed to deflect the local mind from the irritating habits of a dilatory directorate. After all, the Crimea was a long way off,—much further than Chirk,—to which place, the Great Western Company, on taking over the Shrewsbury and Chester line, had, under the profession of “revising” the fares, substantially raised them. This habit is one to which the community has become more accustomed in recent years, but that was a first experience of the ways of powerful
monopolists, and it effectively emphasised the contention that it was high time “an independent” railway company, more directly under local control, should materialise.
Addresses were exchanged between Oswestry and Welshpool, much after the manner of diplomatic “Notes,” some of them phrased in the spirited language which diplomats know so well how to cloak in conventional formulas. Occasionally even the conventional formulas were dispensed with. Questions concerning the legality of certain assemblies were pugnaciously raised and as pugnaciously answered. Four hours’ somewhat heated discussion at an extraordinary meeting of shareholders at Welshpool carried matters no further than the decision that the first sod, when it was cut, should be of Montgomeryshire soil, “but whether,” adds a critical commentator, “at Llanymynech, Welshpool or Newtown, no one knows.” Fresh controversy arose concerning the secretaryship, to which office Mr. Princep had been appointed by Mr. Ormsby-Gore, after a very fleeting appearance on the kaleidoscopic scene of a Mr. Farmer, and the old rivalry of Great Western and North Western “interests” re-appeared in fresh form. The “Oswestry Advertizer,” pointing the warning finger at the fate of another Welsh railway which, after £25,000 out of a total capital of £400,000 had been raised, found everything “swallowed up in the gulph of Chancery” under the winding-up Acts, proclaimed,—“We are almost afraid the Oswestry and Newtown is doomed to the same end.” It certainly looked as if a true prophet was writing that dirge!
“It is hardly possible,” says Mr. Howell, “to conceive a more deplorable state than that to which the company was reduced during this period of five years of Great-western regime. Every shilling that could be realized of the proceeds
of a very superior share list was expended, debt was accumulated, every resource was exhausted; but comparatively little was done in the execution of the works; the company was involved in four chancery suits, of large proportions, and a law suit, and with other suits in prospect. It was necessary to provide £45,000 in cash, towards relieving the chairman from a personal liability of £75,000, and to let free the action of the company from the chancery suits; also further sums to discharge the claims of the contractors and carry on the works.” So moribund, indeed, did the whole affair seem, that the North Western, treating it as practically extinct, began to consider a scheme for converting the Shropshire Union Canal, already in their hands, as a railway to Newtown!
And here were the promoters of this ill-starred project fighting amongst themselves. One party was for keeping back the line from Oswestry till, as a newspaper writer put it, “a rival to Shrewsbury is brought into condition to do it damage.” Another was for complicating it with other new schemes. One of the sternest of all controversies still raged round the moot point whether the line was to run from Oswestry to Newtown or from Newtown to Oswestry, and even private friends fell out as to the exact spot on the proposed route at which the actual work should begin! “Discord triumphs—local prejudice is rampart—personal ill-will abounds—as a necessary consequence no one will apply for the unappropriated shares. Dissolution alone is imminent,” cries the distracted editor.
It was certainly becoming apparent that this was no time for further dallying. The Shrewsbury and Welshpool undertaking, it was reported, was enlisting “an amount of public interest and support seldom equalled in the history of railways,”
and early in 1856 the directors of the Oswestry and Newtown line found it expedient to assure the community that “preparations for letting the contract were in active progress” and the first sod was to be cut on April 11th. Alas for the optimism of eager pioneers and the credulity of an impatient public! April 11th came and proved nothing else than a slightly belated “All Fools Day”! No sod was cut. Not a spade or a barrow was visible, and the operation might, by all appearances be postponed till the Greek Kalends. Patience, already sorely tried, became utterly exhausted. In June the Shrewsbury and Welshpool Railway Bill was read a third time in the House of Commons, and thus the rival scheme loomed still larger upon the horizon. Men had yet to learn that railways could be co-operative as well as competitive.
But so fully, indeed, was the popular mind at that time obsessed with the rivalry of routes that a rumour was started imputing to the directors of the Oswestry and Newtown Company the intention of “disuniting the line between Oswestry and Welshpool.” As if there were not disunion enough already! More genial humorists launched the story that the Prince of Wales was coming down expressly to cut the first sod and had ordered a new pair of “navvys” for the occasion to be made by a Welshpool bootmaker. Feeling, however, was rising again, which was not moderated by the apologia of the directorate suggestive that it was all due to differences between them and the engineers. The engineers themselves were more or less at variance, and, in April 1856, Mr. Barlow, the chief, finding it impossible to agree with his assistant, Mr. Piercy, resigned.
Matters had come to so critical a juncture that eventually, by some happy inspiration, a “committee of investigation”
was appointed to examine “the affairs, position and financial state of the Company.” The Rev. C. T. C. Luxmoore was elected to preside at this inquiry with Mr. Peploe Cartwright of Oswestry as his deputy, and they issued a voluminous report containing a series of recommendations, of which one of the most interesting is that, to reduce expenditure, the earthworks should be limited to a single line, “in all other respects making preparations for a double line.” That, as travellers over the Cambrian to-day are aware, save for the length between Oswestry and Llanymynech, and between Buttington and Welshpool on the Oswestry and Newtown section, was eventually the course adopted. Bridges, including those over the Vyrnwy at Llanymynech, and the Severn at Pool Quay, were built with an extra span for a second pair of rails, but the girders still remain without further completion. The directors did not escape pointed reference to their “heavy responsibilities,” but there was at least the “consolitary fact” that, despite enormous expenditure already incurred, “provided the arrears of deposit, calls and interest are paid up, a sum of £60,000 over and above the Parliamentary deposit of £18,000 invested in the hands of the Accountant-General, will be at once available for the works, an amount little short of sufficient to form half the line,” and the shareholders are urged, “manfully confronting the difficulties that present themselves” to “merge all local jealousies and differences of opinion, in a hearty and unanimous effort to carry out the works.”
It is a long and tortuous story and well may a journalist of those days, bemoan the perplexity of the local historian “when he turns over the files of the various newspapers, to see in one number the praises of certain gentlemen sung by admiring editors and enthusiastic correspondents, and in the
next frantic outbursts from distracted shareholders against the devoted heads of the same gentlemen, who, but one short week before were the admired of all the shareholding admirers. One week he would find a noble lord wafted to the skies on the breath of a public meeting, but in the next ‘the breath thus vainly spent’ would blow his lordship up in a very different fashion, and those whose cheers had wafted my lord to that elevated position, would fain keep him there, so that sublunary affairs as far as regarded railways, would be out of his reach. Then he would find another gentleman on the directory, one day the idol and leading speaker of every meeting, called on the next a ‘strife-engendering-judge,’ and his place filled by another on the board. Presto! and this same gentleman, again turns up trumps! A professional gentleman is the pet of the whole company, but speedily a woe is pronounced upon lawyers. Again the wheel turns round, and the solicitor’s great exertions and painstaking attention to the interests of the line are acknowledged.” [34]
“Our historian would next discover ‘much talkee’ (as John Chinaman would say) anent a certain, or rather uncertain, ‘blighting influence’ which arrested the progress of some of the works, and to get to the bottom of which a ‘committee of investigation’ was appointed. He would open his eyes when he saw the revelations made by that committee, and would wonder how in the name of fortune—or misfortune—the shareholders could be such ‘geese’ (to apply a term
used by one of the best directors the line ever had) as to allow affairs to go on as they had done. He would find that committee triumphant in the praises of the people, but snubbed by another committee who conducted the ceremony of cutting a first sod that would not have been cut this century but for them. When the investigation committee’s work was ended (but not finished!) he would find rival claimants for honour:—Mr. Soandso here, Mr. Whatshisname there, and other gentlemen elsewhere discovering that they were the ‘saviours of the line’—‘unravellers of the mystery’ while the line was yet in jeopardy, and the mystery as dark as Erebus. He would then go on to disputes with contractors and engineers, a law suit commenced here, and threatened there,—directors retiring, and shareholders well-nigh at their wits end. Lawyers are again at a ‘Premium’ and three are appointed to lay their heads together in order to make heads of agreement, for the guidance of new contractors, while the old ones, who the shareholders were afraid would sack the company, were themselves sacked!”
That, indeed, is the usual fate of those who attempt to follow dead controversies through their never-ending labyrinths. A sentimental historian has said that “the world is full of the odour of faded violets”; but, in looking back over these yellow pages of the past, the scent which greets us is sometimes hardly as fragrant; and were it not for purposes of comprehensive record, many of these acrid, but not unamusing, incidents might be decently left buried in oblivion. Happily, however, even the battle of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway was not eternal. The day dawned on which it was gleefully acclaimed that the directors had at length “caught the spirit of promptitude from the committee” and before long “it might be expected to see hundreds of
navvies engaged in cutting up the earth.” Storm clouds might re-gather later, as we shall see, but for the time being peace was restored.
Differences as to policy and even as to the site of the sod cutting were sufficiently composed by the summer of 1857 to admit of a start being made with the work of construction, and on Tuesday, August 4th, the initial ceremony, performed by Lady Williams Wynn, took place, in a field on the east side and adjoining the bowling green at Welshpool. The spot bears no mark to-day, as it might well do, but it may be mentioned that it is between the rails on the down line, as you enter Welshpool station from Buttington, just opposite the signal box. There were, needless to say, great public rejoicings. The long delay in getting to the actual stage of operations gave additional zest to the popular acclaim when that point had, at last, been really reached, and the proceedings were of the most effective and striking character. Crowds flocked in from all sides. Montgomery shared fully in the popular acclamation, and only Oswestry, among the interested towns, stood somewhat aloof. The question of “priority,” apparently, still rankled, and “some misunderstanding” spoilt the effect of what was intended to be a general business holiday. “Only two or three shops were closed, while the others remained open as usual,” and some of the more prominent Oswestry shareholders were conspicuous by their absence at the ceremony, at which no reference was made to the expediting influence of the “committee of investigation.”
But in Welshpool the streets were bright with bunting. At noon shops were closed in order that everyone might participate in the ceremonial. Bells pealed from the Church tower; cannon, “captured at Seringapatam by the great
Lord Clive” were fired from Powys Castle, and a committee, headed by the Mayor (Mr. Owen, grandfather of Mr. Robert Owen of Broad Street), who had taken an active interest in the promotion of both the Oswestry and Shrewsbury lines, assisted by the Town Clerk, carried the day’s programme through in triumph, which included the inevitable “procession.”
A contemporary record may here supply us with the necessary details:—“The Procession began to form in the Powis Castle Park. After some little delay it proceeded towards the Bowling Green, in the following order:—
Two Marshals, on Horseback.
A body of the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry Cavalry dismounted.
The Band.
The Mayor and High Sheriff.
Aldermen and Town Councillors of the Borough of Welshpool.
The wheel-barrow to be used by Lady Williams Wynn, in performing the ceremony.
The Directors of the Company.
The Officials.
Shareholders and Well-wishers.
Band of the Royal Montgomeryshire Rifles.
School Children,—including the National School, Infant Girl and Boys’ School and others.
Flags.
The First Friendly Society.
Flags and Banners.
The Second Friendly Society.
Flags and Banners.
Third Friendly Society.
Cambrian Friendly Society.
Flags and Banners.
A small body of the Royal Montgomeryshire Rifles.
“This possession extended to a very considerable length, and was followed by an immense concourse of pleasure-seekers and others who had come to the town for the purpose of witnessing the ceremony.
“The body of Yeomanry Cavalry were selected by Sergeant-Major Turner, as a body-guard for Lady Wynn during the ceremony, and being in full dress presented a very creditable appearance.
THE CEREMONY.
“At about one o’clock the procession arrived at the spot where the ceremony was to be performed. This, we have stated before, was on the east side of the Bowling Green, on the part of the mound on that side of the green facing the spot, seats were placed which were occupied by anxious and eager spectators.
“After the procession had been properly arranged around the spot, the ceremony was at once proceeded with,” not the least impressive item in it being the solemn invocation by Archdeacon Clive that “God would bless the undertaking in the name of His Son Jesus Christ.” The Mayor then presented Lady Wynn with a copy of the programme of the day’s proceedings printed in gold letters on blue silk; Mrs. Owen of Glansevern read a learned address dipping deep in the classical history of transport, “the first sod was then cut by Lady Wynn, with the silver spade placed in the wheelbarrow provided by the contractor, and wheeled by her along the planks laid on the ground, in a very graceful manner.
Her ladyship performed the ceremony amidst the deafening applause of the assembled multitude. Afterwards other ladies and gentlemen, including the directors, contractors, engineers, etc., went through the same ceremony, using a common wheelbarrow.
“The wheelbarrow, made of mahogany, was emblazoned with the seal of the company, while on the silver spade was engraved the following:—
“Presented to Lady Watkin Williams Wynn, by the Contractor of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, on the occasion of turning the first sod, at Welchpool, on Tuesday, the 4th of August, 1857.”
“Under the inscription was a copy of the seal of the company.”
Subsequently a “cold collation” was provided in a tent on the Bowling Green; there was a prolific toasting of everybody, or nearly everybody concerned, and what was felt to be one of the most auspicious days in the annals of Powysland closed with rural sports and dancing. That night the shareholders dreamt of prodigious dividends.
CHAPTER IV. OSWESTRY TO NEWTOWN.
“But a child,
Yet in a go-cart. Patience; give it time
There is a hand that guides.—Bennett Coll.
It is easy to-day to smile at the optimism of our grand-fathers. We know now that railway dividends are not as readily earned in real life as they sometimes are in dreams which follow gorgeous banquets; but, in one respect, at any rate, the future of the Oswestry and Newtown undertaking appeared to justify jubilation. Axes had been, at any rate, temporarily buried; the advocates of rival routes had composed their differences and everything pointed to a rapid consummation of the scheme. As a matter of fact, little delay was experienced in getting to work with the actual construction. Before October opened gangs of labourers were busy on the track between Pant and Llandysilio. The original idea of a broad gauge line, similar to that adopted by Brunel on the Great Western’s southern arm, had been abandoned in favour of what has since become the standard one for this country of 4ft. 8½ins. [40]
Nevertheless, it was no small undertaking. The Vyrnwy had to be crossed at Llanymynech and the Severn at Pool Quay and again near Buttington. The rest of the line was comparatively free from serious engineering problems, but fresh Parliamentary powers had to be obtained to construct a branch from Llynclys to the Porthywaen lime quarries, and even a little addition of this sort involved endless correspondence over details and other wearing worries. Difficulties of another sort, more formidable, began to appear. The Earl of Powis, whose influence counted for so much, expressing regret for certain differences which had arisen in relation to the policy of the Board, wrote to Sir Watkin resigning his seat, adding the warning note, “I think you should for your own sake watch somewhat jealously the proceedings with regard to the contract.” Sir Watkin hastened to assure his lordship of the “grief and astonishment” which his withdrawal had occasioned his colleagues and to deprecate divisions at critical hours.
And it certainly was a critical hour. Money was urgently wanted, borrowing was barred until provisions of the Act were complied with, and though an attempt by Mr. Barlow to seek an injunction in Chancery failed after a hard struggle, the contract had to be dissolved in order to substitute an arrangement by which payment could be made by shares and debentures in lieu of cash. It was on this account that Messrs. Davidson and Oughterson, who had earlier succeeded Messrs. Thornton and McCormick, in turn gave place to the men who had already come to the rescue of the Newtown and Llanidloes undertaking.
The arrangements by which these early undertakings were “leased” to the contractors has been the subject of controversy among railway financial experts, but they were
stoutly defended in a letter to the “Times” shortly after the completion of most of them by Mr. David Davies himself, who claimed that by this means “Wales had the benefit of something like 700 miles of railway which would not have been made for at least another century if we had waited for the localities to subscribe the necessary funds.” In the present case, at any rate, Mr. Savin’s efforts at financial re-establishment were the outcome of the suggestion of the North Western, warmly supported by the Great Western party, including the Chairman himself, who had become practically liable for £75,000, if the railway was not made and the company set upon a sound footing. To set free the powers of the Company no less than £45,000 had to be paid down, no small task with subscriptions to the share list not easy to obtain. Yet, that Mr. Savin accomplished—and more. He bought up the existing contract, compromised and settled all existing claims and got rid of all liabilities. The rearrangement, however, took a great deal of time, and was later complicated by the dissolution of partnership between him and Mr. Davies, while the works were proceeding between Welshpool and Newtown. Not until July 26th, 1861, was it finally arranged that Mr. Savin should relinquish the lease, and work the line on an amended basis, under which he was to take the earnings, pay 4¾ per cent. to the Company, supplementing the earnings of the line by a draft upon the North Western, who granted rebates. [42]
Still, it considerably expedited construction. The works came into the new hands in October 1859, and so far as the chief portions of the undertaking went, progress became quite satisfactory. As is so often the case, in these affairs,
it was an unexpected development over a detail that caused the greatest perturbation. Another difference arising on the board, this time regarding certain engagements entered into about the site of the station at Oswestry, Sir Watkin, who appears to have had certain misgivings as to the conduct of the business, being out-voted at a meeting of the directors, just before Mr. Savin came into possession of the works, in his turn left the room and a few days later sent in his resignation. He was replaced in the chair by Mr. David Pugh, M.P., of Llanerchyddol Hall, Welshpool, who continued to act in that capacity till, on his death in 1861, he was succeeded by Mr. Whalley.
On the line, however, the navvies went doggedly digging on, despite atrocious weather. By May 1st, 1860, the track was sufficiently complete from Oswestry to Pool Quay to be opened for traffic to that point, and advertisements began to appear announcing “cheap trains” for excursionists to the “far-famed and commanding heights of Llanymynech Hills.” In the middle of the month a more venturesome journey was attempted and, by the grace of God, safely accomplished. The last link in the iron road had just been laid, a mile or two from Welshpool, and one fine evening, “shortly after six o’clock” (as a local journalist records) “the ‘Montgomery’ was attached to a number of trucks, with rough seats placed on them for the occasion. Every available space was filled by a number of Poolonians who were in waiting. The train then slowly proceeded along the beautiful valley of the Severn to the Cefn Junction [43] (that is to be) with the Shrewsbury and Welshpool line, where more trucks were attached, and a considerable addition to the passengers made.
Soon Welshpool was reached, and the shrill whistle of the engine—for the first time heard in that beautiful locality—was all but overpowered by the cheers of the assembled people. The train was brought to a standstill on the very spot where, some years ago (we are afraid to say how many) the first sod was cut. Congratulations were passed, and crowds of the very old, and the very young, to whom an Engine heretofore had been a figment of imagination, gazed with wonder at ‘The Montgomery’ while their more travelled neighbours adjourned to the Bowling Green, where Mr. R. Owen made a short pithy speech. He very properly acknowledged the business-like activity of Messrs. Davies and Savin, to whom the public were so largely indebted for the arrival of a locomotive at Welshpool. Mr. Webb, on behalf of the contractors, suitably responded; and the proceedings were cut short by a warning whistle from the engine, on which sat Campbell, the locomotive superintendent, who very prudently wished to get back over the rough road before the shades of evening overtook them. The train then went off for Pool Quay at a smart pace, considering that the rails were unballasted, and with the trucks loaded with juveniles, many of whom perhaps had this day their first trip by railway. In Welshpool the bells rang out merry peals, and cannons were fired, and everything betokened the hilarity of the inhabitants.”
What the Board of Trade would say nowadays to a heavily-ladened train of passengers being run at a “smart pace,” or any other, over an “unballasted” road, can be left to the reader’s imagination!
Anyhow, the line being finally finished off to the last nut and bolt, was soon approved of by the Government Inspector, Colonel Yolland; and everything was ready for the formal
opening on Tuesday, August 14th. “The day (says a contemporary account) proved most auspicious. Early in the morning the weather was very dull, but before the middle of the day it cleared up, and turned out most bright and cheerful. At about a quarter to eleven o’clock the Mayor and Corporation of Welshpool met at the Town Hall, and from thence proceeded (headed by the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry Band) to the Railway Station by eleven, in time for the train that was to convey them, together with the directors, shareholders, and general public to Oswestry.
“As may be readily supposed, a monster train was required for this purpose, and an immense number of carriages were in readiness. After some delay, the passengers took their seats, and the train started for Oswestry. The Corporation were followed by the Montgomeryshire Militia Band, and the 2nd Montgomeryshire Rifle Volunteers, who proceeded to Oswestry by the same train.
“As the train proceeded on its course, and arrived at the various stations, it was hailed with the most enthusiastic greetings from those who assembled along the line as spectators on this occasion.
“The arrival of the train at Oswestry was made the signal for a general discharge of artillery, such as is customarily used on these occasions, and added to this was the discharge of a great number of fog-signals. The bells of the Old Church, too, rang out their merriest peals. At the Station an immense concourse of people had assembled, and the Welshpool Corporation was received by the Mayor and Corporation of Oswestry, who had been escorted to the Station by the Rifle Corps, headed by their band. The Pool Corporation received a hearty greeting from their civic brethren in Oswestry, and the Montgomeryshire Rifles formed in column opposite the
Oswestry Corps, and each presented arms, when the Oswestry Band struck up “God save the Queen.” They all then proceeded, in the following order, to the Powis Hall:—
Banner. Banner.
Band and Members of the Oswestry Rifle Corps.
Band and Members of the 2nd Montgomeryshire Rifle Corps.
Band of the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry.
The Mayor and Corporation of Welshpool.
The Mayor and Corporation of Oswestry.
Tradesmen, Shareholders, etc.
Drum and Fife Band.
Navvies, etc.
“At the Town Hall the Corporation had most hospitably provided for their refreshment. Punch and wine of the choicest and best descriptions were abundantly supplied, under the management of Mr. Atkins, and Mrs. Edwards, of the Queen’s Head Hotel, Oswestry. The company present included the Oswestry Corporation, the Welshpool Corporation, the directors of the railway, the Second Montgomeryshire Volunteers, and the Oswestry Volunteers.”
The special train then returned to Welshpool, where Mrs. Owen of Glansevern declared the line opened. Then the inevitable procession, and the not less inevitable “cold collation” and speech making, and dancing. Only one untoward incident marked the day. Owing to the crush to board the returning train from Oswestry, the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry and Montgomeryshire Militia bands got left behind, and the Oswestry Rifle Corps musicians, who had been more successful in the scramble, had to do all the blowing for their stranded comrades. But, it is recorded, they blew with triple vigour, as well they might!
Oswestry was now, at long last, connected with Montgomeryshire, but there were those who felt in no mood for rejoicing in that event. Among the residents of the Severn Valley were those who, like the redoubtable Mr. Weller “considered that the rail is unconstitootional and an inwader o’ privileges.” They solemnly shook their heads and deplored the doom of the mail-coach. What, they asked, was to become of Tustin? Tustin had driven the mail coach from Shrewsbury every morning, summer and winter, starting from the Post Office at 4 a.m., and covering the score of miles to Welshpool in about two hours. To see him and his fine horses arrive at the Royal Oak was a source of daily pride to Welshpolonians. “In the summer mornings,” says a writer in the “Licensing Victualler’s Gazette” in 1878, looking back upon those days, “there was always a number of people up to see the mail arrive, and the cordial and cheery welcome given to those passengers who alighted to partake of breakfast at the hotel, by the buxom and genial landlady, Mrs. Whitehall, was a thing to be remembered and talked about. She was the pink of what such a woman should be, and the fame of her cuisine reached very far beyond the county in which she lived.” Later in the morning, the thirteen miles between Welshpool and Newtown were done in little more than an hour. But “the days of coaching were drawing to a close even in Wales; the iron horse was slowly to elbow one coach and then another off the road, putting them back as it were, nearer and nearer to the coast; until even Tustin and his famous Aberystwyth mail had to succumb. But they made a gallant fight of it, and died what we may call gamely.” In recent years the coach, or its modern counterpart, the charabanc and motor bus, have come into something of their own again, and are providing, in turn, a new form of competition with the railways.
In 1860, long distance highway traffic did seem doomed, for the “iron horse” could cover the ground in what then appeared a prodigious pace. Six trains ran each way between Oswestry and Welshpool on week-days and two each way on Sundays, while excursion fares advertised in connection with a Sunday School trip from Oswestry to Welshpool held out the alluring advantage of “covered carriages, 1s.; first-class, 2s.” for the double journey—a figure to make the mouth of the present day passenger water! It was hardly so necessary then, as it has proved to be on recent occasions, to the writer’s personal knowledge, for groups of mourners travelling to a funeral to contrive to save a few pence by taking “pleasure party” tickets!
But, as yet, no “pleasure” or any other party could proceed by rail beyond Welshpool. Work on the remaining link, had begun; but at the Newtown end, where arrangements had been entered into for a working alliance with the Newtown and Llanidloes Railway. At the Welshpool end circumstances were not so propitious. The original surveys had been made by way of Berriew, but this necessitated carrying the line through part of the Glansevern domain, and, as the late Earl of Powis had jocularly remarked, in connection with the planning of a neighbouring line, the beau ideal of a railway is one that comes about a mile from one’s own house and passes through a neighbour’s land.
So it was to the other side of the valley that Mr. Piercy had, at length, to carry his measuring instruments, and, crossing the Severn at Kilkewydd, climb the long incline to Forden. Before this was finally accomplished the dissolution of partnership between the contractors had taken place, and while Mr. Davies transferred his attention to some adjacent
railway schemes, Mr. Savin took into partnership Mr. Ward of the Donnett, Whittington, near Oswestry, and the name of “Savin and Ward” was, for some years, to become as familiar in the railway world as had previously been that of “Davies and Savin.” The four mile stretch between Newtown and Abermule was in working order and trains were running over this isolated section of the Oswestry and Newtown system, but the remaining gap between Abermule and Welshpool had still to receive its finishing touches, when the term set in the agreement for completion expired.
Mr. Savin was able to cite not only the “worst weather that anyone can remember,” but the procrastination over the arrangement and transfer of the lease as ample justification for the delay in fulfilling the engagement. Moreover, other matters were arising which tended to distract the attention of the directors from any passing squabble as to dates. The “overbearing leviathians” might have been quelled some years earlier, but they had not been killed, and at the beginning of 1861, movements were again afoot in North-Western circles to secure an extension of the Minsterley branch to Montgomery, while under the Bishop’s Castle Railway Bill, which was going through the Committee of the House of Lords, the London and North Western Railway, apparently trading on the payment made to the Oswestry and Newtown Company for access to Welshpool by way of Buttington, sought a further reciprocal arrangement by which, if the Oswestry and Newtown availed themselves of the powers to subscribe to, lease, or work the Bishop’s Castle line, the North Western was to obtain the right to run over the Oswestry and Newtown metals into Newtown, the latter Company being given a quid pro quo in the shape of similar advantage
over the Shrewsbury and Welshpool line. It seemed an innocent enough proposal on the surface, but it did not blind the astute Mr. Whalley to the danger of certain developments favourable to North Western interests. The clause, as it happened, had been inserted in the absence of any representatives of the Oswestry and Newtown Company, and this objection was carried into the committee room. For hours the arguments swayed to and fro. Numbers of witnesses, including officials of the Oswestry and Newtown, gave evidence; and, in the end, the anticipated compromise was affected, by withdrawals all round. The Bishop’s Castle Railway lost the support of the Oswestry and Newtown, but the sinister designs of the North Western upon Newtown were finally scotched, and the local Company, of which Mr. Robert B. Elwin was now General Manager, and Mr. B. Tanner, who had not long succeeded Mr. Hayward, on his resignation, in that capacity on the Llanidloes and Newtown, secretary, could go forward with greater confidence.
On Monday, May 27th, the first train, drawn by the engine “Leighton,” and conveying a party of invited guests and the engineers, passed safely over Kilkewydd bridge, amidst a fusillade of fog signals, and thus the last and most formidable of the engineering exploits on the new length of line was accomplished. The bridge had been constructed in remarkably short time, and a contemporary record of this auspicious incident duly mentions that “the speedy completion of so complicated and troublesome a task is mainly due to the indefatigable exertions of Mr. John Ward, one of the contractors, and Mr. James Marshall, the resident superintendent.” Early the next month Colonel Yolland inspected the whole length from Welshpool to Newtown, pausing to express his
special approbation of the Kilkewydd bridge [51] as “the best constructed on the line,” and it was now open to the Company publicly to announce that from June 10th a through service of trains would run from Oswestry to Newtown and on to Llanidloes.
No further formal opening seems to have been arranged, but, though the day was, like so many that had so proceeded it, very wet, rapidly organised celebrations took place at some spots. Montgomery had already taken its share in the opening to Welshpool, but it was now to have a festival of its own, as was only fitting, since that ancient borough may, in no small sense, be regarded as one of the ancestral homes of the “Cambrian.” It was here, as we have seen, that Mr. Piercy had largely acquired his interest and skill in railway engineering, while at the office of Mr. Charles Mickleburgh. A committee, with Mr. W. Mickleburgh as hon. secretary, and treasurer, had little difficulty in getting together some £150 as a celebration fund. A programme was as quickly organised, including, of course, a procession and a dinner, but to this was added another little ceremony,—the presentation by Mrs. Owen of Glansevern, now a familiar central figure on these occasions, of a silver bugle to Captain Johns and his gallant men of the Railway Volunteers. The instrument bore the inscription,—“Presented by Anne Warburton Owen, of Glansevern, to the Third Montgomeryshire (Railway) Rifles, 1861.” Above was an appropriate design, on the dexter side a representation of the locomotive engine “Glansevern,” and on the sinister a railway viaduct with a train passing over.
The occasion was singularly appropriate, for no small part in the initiation and maintenance of the Corps belongs to the little group of railway men who were associated with Montgomery, the Mickleburghs, Mr. George Owen, Mr. Piercy and others. In after years it was the habit of their children to ask these gallant men whether they had “ever really killed anyone” with their formidable swords, and some of them were wont to answer that, perhaps not, but they had taken their part in the “battle of Aberystwyth,” a somewhat mysterious affair among the plum stalls in the market-place, possibly still remembered by men well advanced in years. In any case, we may be quite sure they would have acquitted themselves worthily if called upon, and they did indeed provide an inspiring note to all such ceremonial festivities. On this auspicious day of the opening of the line, to Mr. Ashford, the trumpeter of the Corps, fell the honour of sounding the first blast, and amidst the cheers of the countryside, some 600 ladies and gentlemen fell to dancing “to the music of the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry and Militia Bands, and the capital band of the Welshpool Cadet Corps, composed of the young gentlemen of Mr. Browne’s academy.”
And so, at long last, trains were to run through from Oswestry to Llanidloes. Six left Oswestry every weekday, the first timed to depart at 7 a.m., passing all the intermediate stations (including Arddleen, now added to the original five) to Welshpool without a stop, though this “express” was taken off the daily list some months later, and only ran on fair days. Four trains made the reverse journey from Llanidloes to Oswestry; while two trains ran each way on Sundays—a more generous service even than that afforded to-day! The Cambrian, as someone said, might still be a child, but it was a rapidly growing child. The guiding hand was at work, and additional limbs were shaping themselves, both at the Newtown and Oswestry end of the system, with such rapidity that we can best deal with them one by one.
CHAPTER V. FROM THE SEVERN TO THE SEA.
“Wales is a land of mountains. Its mountains explain its isolation and its love of independence; they explain its internal divisions; they have determined, throughout its history, what the direction and method of its progress were to be.”—The Late Sir O. M. Edwards.
I.
So far the lines already opened or under construction only traversed the valley of the Severn. It was now proposed to penetrate the uplands which lie between the banks of Sabrina and the shores of Cardigan Bay. It was a somewhat formidable undertaking. “The mountains of Carno,” wrote the philosophic Pennant, “like the mountains of Gilboa, were celebrated for the fall of the mighty.” On their steep slopes, in 1077 Gruffydd ab Cynan and Trahaiarn ab Caradoc had wrestled for the sovereignty of North Wales. Across their shoulders, some four centuries later, had marched the English troops of Henry IV. to their camp near Machynlleth, in a vain effort to subjugate the redoubtable Welsh chieftain, Owain Glyndwr. Now the mighty heads of the mountains were, at last, to shake and submit to the incursion of another invader, more insistent and more powerful than any that had gone before, and a Montgomeryshire engineer and contractor were to conquer where an English King had failed. In one respect only was their experience akin. Henry’s army had become dissolved by the continuance of bad weather
which gave them all cold feet. The rain, that falls alike upon the just and unjust, was to hamper Mr. David Davies’s army of navvies, but never to deter them from reaching and abiding at Machynlleth.
In the initial stages of the new invasion all went well. So rapidly were the Parliamentary preliminaries negotiated that, on July 27th, 1857, while the promoters of the neighbouring Oswestry and Newtown Railway were still wrangling over their internecine rivalries, Royal Assent was given to the Newtown and Machynlleth Railway Bill, authorising the Company to raise a capital of £150,000 in £10 shares and loans to the extent of £50,000. The total length of the proposed line was 22½ miles and the works were to be completed within five years.
A month later the first ordinary meeting of the Company was held at Machynlleth. Sir Watkin presided over a most harmonious gathering, in striking contrast to some of the meetings which had assembled further east, and the directors in their report, read by Mr. D. Howell, who was to act as secretary until the amalgamation of the company in the Cambrian Railways in 1864, had little to say beyond offering congratulations to the shareholders on the speedy passing of their measure through Parliament. The report seems to have been adopted without comment, and the only other business was to appoint the board,—Earl Vane, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Mr. R. D. Jones, Mr. C. T. Thurston, Mr. J. Foulkes, Aberdovey, and Mr. L. Ruck. [54]
In a little over twelve months from that date the Company were in a position to begin operations. The contract had been let to Messrs. Davies and Savin (Mr. Benjamin Piercy again acting as engineer), and at the end of November, 1858, the first sod of the new link in the extended chain was turned amidst great popular rejoicings. So speedy had been the preparations that no time availed to procure a more ornamental implement, and the Countess Vane had to use an ordinary iron shovel for the purpose! A contemporary record gives the following account:—
“The Cutting of the First Sod was very properly fixed to take place at Machynlleth, not only out of compliment to the noble Earl and Countess Vane, but also to increase the interest of the inhabitants of this locality in the undertaking. The morning was ushered in by the bells of the parish church ringing out most musically, the firing of cannon, and similar demonstrations of good-will; and although in the early part of the morning the rain fell heavily, yet towards the time fixed for the proceedings to commence, bright Sol shone cheerfully over the beautiful hills and valleys of Montgomeryshire, and made everything look cheerful, as befitted the occasion. Two o’clock was the time fixed for cutting the first sod, but previously to this time a large procession was formed at the Town Hall, and proceeded to the ground in the following order:—
Band.
The Directors.
Flags and Banners.
The Demonstration Committee.
Flags and Banners.
The Shareholders, Visitors, and Well-wishers of the Company.
Contractors and Persons bearing the Barrow and Spade.
Flags and Banners.
The Children of the National and Vane Infant Schools.
Flags and Banners.
Band.
Miners and Quarrymen, headed by their Captains, all wearing Sashes.
Band.
First Friendly Society.
Flags and Banners.
Second Friendly Society.
Flags and Banners.
“On their arrival at the Schools the procession passed under a well-formed archway of evergreens and flowers, very massive in structure, over which were the mottoes,—‘Success to the Newtown and Machynlleth Railway,’ and ‘Commercial and Agricultural prosperity.’ At the entrance to the ground was another archway erected, over which was the motto—‘Peace and Prosperity.’ On reaching the spot where the ceremony was appointed to take place a large enclosure was railed out, at one end of which was a pavilion for the accommodation of the ladies, which was well filled. The parties had not long taken their allotted places before Lady Vane came upon the ground, and was welcomed in a way that must have been very gratifying to her, indeed it could not have been otherwise, for it is generally admitted that a kinder-hearted lady does not exist in the Principality, and she is most highly and deservedly popular, and well may Earl Vane be proud of possessing such a wife. She was accompanied by Lord Vane, and the young family, who appeared all thoroughly to enjoy the occasion.”
After speeches by Lord and Lady Vane, her ladyship “having put on a pair of gauntlets, which were presented by the Committee of Management, proceeded to cut the first sod, which, having been deposited in the barrow presented by Messrs. Davies and Savin, the contractors, was wheeled to the end of the plank, after which Mrs. E. D. Jones, of Trafeign, performed the same ceremony, and was followed by Lord Seaham, and the other junior olive branches of the family. The bands played in their best style, and the cheering was most deafening, and thus ended this portion of the day’s proceedings.”
The subsequent proceedings were of a highly convivial nature, as befitted so auspicious an occasion. There was a generous imbibing of “a bountiful supply of Mr. Lloyd’s prime port, sherry, etc.,” and “a procession of miners and quarrymen, more than 100 of whom dined at the house of Mrs. Margaret Owen, the White Lion Inn, perhaps the most noted house in the county for the excellence of its ale.”
The work on this line was of a rather different nature to that on which the contractors had been engaged on the Newtown and Llanidloes, and in bringing the Oswestry and Newtown line to completion. Instead of meandering, more or less, along river-side lowlands, the track had to be carried uphill and down-dale over the shoulder of the Montgomeryshire highlands, ascending to an altitude of 693 feet above sea level at Talerddig top by a climb of 273 feet from Caersws, and running down again by a 645 feet drop to the Dovey Valley at Machynlleth. This involved a gradient, at one point, of as much as 1 in 52, and, just after leaving the summit the line had to pierce through the hillside. A tunnel was originally thought of, but abandoned in favour of a cutting through solid rock to a depth of 120 feet. It was while
excavations between the summit and the cutting were being made that the engineers discovered a strange geological formation, which, still observable from the train on the left-hand side immediately after leaving Talerddig station for Llanbrynmair, has come to be popularly known as “the natural arch.” The work of excavating the cutting was no child’s play. But it proved a profitable part of the contract, and it seems to have furnished not only enough stone for many of the adjacent railway works, but, according to popular rumour, the foundation of Mr. David Davies’s vast fortune. Seeking an investment for the money he made out of it, it is said, Mr. Davies turned his thoughts to coal and in the rich mineral district of the Rhondda Valley it was sunk, rapidly to fructify, and to form the basis of that great industrial organisation the Ocean Collieries, famed throughout this country and wherever coal is used for navigation.
For Mr. Davies was now left to finish the Newtown and Machynlleth line alone. While he was obtaining stone—and gold—out of Talerddig, his former partner, Mr. Savin, had turned his attention to another link in the chain between the Severn and the sea. In the end this arrangement, although it seems to have led to some little feeling between the former partners, which Mr. Whalley and others did their best to dispel, probably expedited the completion of the through connection. At any rate, it did not hinder progress among the hills. In this, the “long looked-for arrival of the world-wide famed iron-horse,” as an expansive journalistic scribe put it, at Carno, was celebrated by rejoicings, and a dinner given by Mr. David Davies to his foremen and a presentation by him of a purse of £50 to the “meritorious engine-driver, Mr. Richard Metcalfe.” Toasts were honoured, and Mr. Davies giving that of the evening, expatiated at length
on the virtues of the redoubtable “Richard.” The whole secret of the speed with which the railways he had constructed had been accomplished rested in “Richard’s” zeal and prowess. Though the sea had covered their handiwork on the Vale of Clwyd railway half a dozen times, “Richard” had stuck to his post, by day and night—“from two o’clock on Monday morning till twelve o’clock on Saturday night, without once going to bed.” If they had made nineteen miles of the Oswestry and Newtown track in thirteen months it was “in no small degree owing to ‘Richard’s’ never-failing energy. He never grumbled, but always met me with a pleasant smile.” No wonder that Carno shouted its three times three in “Richard’s” honour and hardly less amazing that the good fellow, on rising to reply, utterly broke down and could not complete a sentence of his carefully prepared oration. “Never mind, ‘Richard,’” exclaimed Mr. David Howell, “that is more eloquent than a speech.”
From Carno, Metcalfe and his engine were soon to proceed to make the acquaintance of other friends and admirers further along the line. Llanbrynmair was soon to be reached, and another writer in the local Press is moved to compare its former remoteness, “verging close upon the classic ‘Ultima Thule’ of the first Roman,” with the new conditions. “The railway,” he says, “with its snorting, puffing and Vesuvian volumes of clouds, now to a certain extent breaks upon the whilom monotony of this valley among mountains; its aptly termed iron-horse (Mars-like, but still in a placable mood) rolls majestically along, conveying the very backbone of creation from the granite rock, ready trimmed, and requiring but the cunning hand of the workman to fix the stones in their appropriate place to span the meandering Jaen and Twymyn streams.”
One of the bridges across the Twymyn, indeed, skilfully designed by Mr. Piercy, with whom was associated Mr. George Owen, was a notable structure. It consisted of three arches, its extreme height, 70 feet above the rushing waters of this mountain torrent, the abutments being large blocks of Talerddig stone and the arches turned in best Ruabon brick. For, continues our chronicler, it was a highly satisfactory fact for Welsh patriots to contemplate that Mr. Davies was “working his line by means of Welsh materials, drawn from inexhaustible Welsh mountains, his workmen are natives, the planning and workmanship is also native, and he himself a thorough and spirited Welshman.”
Less placable were some of the influences which began to exert themselves further afield. The Board having set their hand to a proposed agreement by which the Great Western Company undertook to work the line for 40 per cent. of the gross earnings and an exchange of traffic arrangement, it became the signal for raising again the old bogey of rival “interests.” An anonymous writer in the “Open Column” of the “Oswestry Advertizer,” describing the Newtown and Machynlleth as “the worst managed railway in the course of formation,” warned Machynlleth against its impending doom. It would mean a break of journey at Newtown, and, to avert this, the North Western, once the personification of all unrighteousness, was now transformed into the fairy godmother, who, by pressing forward its co-operation with the Bishop’s Castle, Mid-Wales and Manchester and Milford undertakings, was urged to carry forward connecting links from Llanidloes over the shoulder of Plynlimmon, as a competitive route to the sea. The article attracted some attention at the next meeting of the Newtown and Machynlleth shareholders,
where the bargain with the Great Western was warmly defended, both by Capt. R. D. Pryce, who presided, and by Mr. David Davies, as the largest shareholder as well as contractor. But the Oswestrian alarm was groundless. What looked a rosy prospect from the Newtown and Machynlleth Company’s point of view, had another aspect, when it came to be more fully considered at Paddington, and, in spite of repeated reminders, that Company failed to take the necessary steps to secure its ratification by its shareholders, and the working agreement for the new line was transferred to the Oswestry and Newtown, who were already working the Newtown and Llanidloes Railway. The incipient Cambrian, in fact, willy nilly, was now beginning to experience the sensation which comes, sooner or later, to healthily expanding youth, when it has to stand alone. Tumbles there might be ahead, but the day of leading strings was finally left behind.
Two engines “of a powerful class” with 4ft. 6in. wheels, capable of hauling 140 ton loads up 1/52 gradients at 15 miles an hour, accelerated to 25 miles on the easier levels had been quoted for by Messrs. Sharp, Stewart and Co., of the Atlas Works, Manchester, in 1861, at the cost of £2,445 each, and by the end of 1862 the Company were fully equipped to cope with the traffic of the district.
At the end of the first week of the new year (1863) the opening ceremony took place. The engines, “Countess Vane” and “Talerddig,” drew a train of 1,500 passengers, who had marched in procession to the Machynlleth Station, up the long incline, over the Talerddig summit and down to Newtown and back. At the intermediate stations, Cemmes Road, Llanbrynmair, Carno, Pontdolgoch and Caersws, it was hailed with vociferous applause as it sped on its way,
and as Newtown was approached the travellers found themselves passing under triumphal arches, to the clang of church bells and the blare of bands. On the leading engine rode the young Marquis of Blandford playing “See the Conquering Here Comes” on the cornet-a-piston, Mr. George Owen, Mr. Davies and Mr. Webb. Earl Vane was in the train and received a public welcome at the station. Then the inevitable speeches. The return train was still longer and took two hours to reach Machynlleth, where the jubilations were renewed, and Countess Vane, to whom Mr. Davies presented a silver spade in honour of the previous ceremony of sod cutting, declared the line open. More speeches, luncheon, toasts and processioning ab lib and “so home.”
The time, however, had come for a memorable parting. From the consummation of this project Mr. David Davies’s connection with the Cambrian, as one of its contractors, was to cease. He had saved it from early death, and guided the infant through its difficult teething time, while at the same time he was employed in building other railways, which, later, were to become closely linked with its fuller life. Among these was the Mid-Wales, to become amalgamated with the Cambrian in 1904, the Brecon and Merthyr, over four miles of whose metals, from Talyllyn Junction to Brecon, Cambrian trains were from that date to run, and the Manchester and Milford, which formed a junction with the Cambrian at Aberystwyth. But so far as the Cambrian itself is concerned Mr. Davies’s future association was to be that of a director, an office, in its turn, dramatically terminated amidst fresh thunder clouds which had not yet appeared above the horizon.
II.
Mr. Savin, as we have seen, had, during these later stages of progress with the making of the line from Newtown, been busily engaged still nearer the coast. A company with an ambitious name and a not less ambitious aim had been formed to build a railway from Aberystwyth to Machynlleth and along the shores of Merionethshire to Portmadoc, the port of shipment of the Festiniog slate traffic, and eventually to continue, through Pwllheli to that wonderful prospective harbour, upon which the eyes of railway promoters had already been turned without avail, Porthdynlleyn, near Nevin. [63] Its close connection with the other local undertakings is shown by the agreement under which the Oswestry and Newtown was to subscribe £75,000, and the Newtown and Llanidloes £25,000 by the creation of 5 per cent. preference stock, a sum ultimately increased in the case of the former Company by another £100,000.
Borne on the wings of Mr. Whalley’s eloquence, Aberystwyth, assembled in public meeting, led by the Mayor, Mr. Robert Edwards, gave its enthusiastic support to the scheme. This was followed by another meeting, at which Mr. Piercy, as engineer, outlined the plan and bade the inhabitants look forward to the day when the railway was to enable them to compete with successful rivals on the North Wales Coast, and once more justify for them
the proud name of “the Brighton of Wales.” Other railway companies were inclined to be obstructive, but their opposition was not altogether formidable, and when Mr. Abraham Howell appeared in the role of mediator between conflicting interests, the way was soon prepared for proceeding apace with the scheme. So harmonious, indeed, had the atmosphere become that within less than two months of this meeting the Company’s Bill had received Royal Assent, almost a record, surely, in those days of interminable controversy! Mr. Savin’s project was to begin by carrying the line, whence it linked up with the Newtown and Machynlleth at the latter place, as far as Ynyslas. Here, at the nearest point on the seaboard, the mists which hang over the great bogs that stretch from the sand-dunes up to the foothills of Plynlimmon, took fantastic shape in the eye of the ambitious contractor. He may, perchance, have heard the story told of a man who owned a barren piece of land bordering the seashore. A friend advised him to convert it to some use. The owner replied that it would not grow grass, or produce corn, was unfit for fruit trees, and could not even be converted into an ornamental lake as the soil was too sandy to retain the water. “Then,” said the friend, “why not make it a first-class watering place?” This, at any rate, was the project on which Mr. Savin set his heart. But not even first-class watering places can be built in a day, and the contractor made a modest beginning with a row of lodging houses. Alas! not for the last time, the parable of the man who built upon the sands was to have its application to these Welsh coast undertakings. The houses were no sooner finished than they began to sink, and some time later they were pulled down and the material put to more hopeful and profitable use.
Ynyslas remains to-day a lonely swamp, but somewhat better luck attended the effort to carry the excursionist on to Borth. The line was pushed on there, and an old farm house, on the outskirts of what was then nothing but a tiny fishing village, was converted into a station. The following July the line was open for traffic. Curiously enough, little public interest seems to have been aroused in Borth itself by the event. The inhabitants of the village were mainly engaged in seafaring, and the arrival of the steam engine, in the opinion of some, boded no good. As for English visitors—what use were they? The story, indeed, is told that some four enterprising tourists, who had arrived ahead of the railway, sought accommodation in vain in the village, and had perforce to make the best of it in a contractor’s railway wagon that stood on a siding of the unfinished line. They cuddled up under a tarpaulin sheet and settled down for the night, when someone gave the wagon a shove and starting down an incline on the unballasted track it proceeded merrily on its way to Ynyslas. Not so merry the affrighted and unwilling passengers, who, when day broke, discovered themselves marooned in a remote spot miles from anywhere productive of breakfast bacon and eggs!
But, if Borth itself looked on askance, Aberystwyth was ready enough to acclaim the approach of the railway. The resort on the Rheidol had already begun to attract visitors who completed the journey from Llanidloes or Machynlleth by coach, and now there was the prospect, in the early future, of the railway running into the town itself. So, very early on the day when the first train was to steam into and out of Borth, vehicles of all sorts crowded the road from Aberystwyth, the narrow street of Borth was rapidly thronged with an excited multitude who flowed over on the sands.
At 8-30 a.m. the train left, with 100 excursionists. It was followed by another at 1 p.m., for which 530 took tickets. There was a great scramble for seats, and every one of the thirty coaches of which the train was composed, was packed to the doors. Those who failed to obtain a footing formed an avenue a mile long through which the train moved out amidst tumultuous applause. In the carriages the passengers shouted, talked, ate, drank and—sang hymns! The twelve miles to Machynlleth took about twenty-five minutes to accomplish, and, arrived there, the excursionists enjoyed themselves immensely, “as,” says a contemporary recorder, “Aberystwyth people generally manage to do when from home at any rate.”
Nor were the good folks of Aberystwyth peculiar in their joy. A Shropshire newspaper published a leading article of a column and a half descriptive of “six hours by the seaside for half-a-crown,”—the return excursion fare from Shrewsbury and Oswestry, while Poolonians could travel for a florin. The result was a mighty rush of trippers, not the less attracted, possibly, by the additional announcement that the railway company had thoughtfully opened a refreshment room at Borth station! So great, indeed, was the press of traffic, that the company’s servants sometimes had considerable difficulty in coping with it. One day all the tickets were exhausted, but the stationmaster at Carno, one Burke, an Irishman, not to be beaten, booked some thirty or forty farm labourers with “cattle tickets.” The manager passed next day and remonstrated. “Why, Burke,” said he, “the men won’t like your making beasts of them!” “Och, yure honour,” returned the stationmaster, “many of them made bastes of themselves before they returned.”
Indeed, the scenes at Borth on the arrival of these excursions were occasionally almost indescribable. One scribe invokes
the loan of the pencil of Hogarth adequately to portray it. “From a cover of stones close by springs an urchin lithe and swift; another and another, ten, twelve or more, ‘naked as unto earth they came,’ and away in single file across the beach into the sea. The vans move ponderously on, pushed by mermen and mermaids, and out spring any quantity of live Hercules. Very curious must be the sight, if one might judge by the crowds of ladies—well women at any rate—and gentlemen around every group of bathers. Boats are in great request and the ladies cling very lovingly to the boatmen who, in return, hug them tightly as they embark or disembark their fair freight. The very porpoises, gambling out there, seem to enjoy the whole thing heartily and shake their fat sides at the fun. Our friend with the hammer discourses learnedly about those long ridges of hard rock which stand out over the Dovey Plain when, gracious me! we look round and, will you believe it? There was a bevy of females in a state of—shall I go on? No; but I will just say we saw them waddling like ducks into the water. The porpoises were alarmed and betook themselves off. And so did we. Had the bathers been black instead of white we should have thought ourselves on the coast of Africa. Such an Adam and Eve-ish state of things we never saw before. Well, honi soit qui mal y pense.”
Anyhow, thus did the six hours swiftly pass in those unregenerate days. For Mr. Savin had yet to build his Borth hotel and lodging houses, which to-day give welcome shelter to a very different throng of visitors, summer after summer, attracted by the placid beauties and the invigorating air of Cardigan Bay. It was, at worst, but a temporary orgy, marking, as it were, a new epoch in the life of the Cambrian; whose lengthening limbs now stretched from the Severn to the sea.
CHAPTER VI. THE BATTLE OF ELLESMERE.
“The question of a railway is now or never.”—The Late Mr. R. G. Jebb, of Ellesmere.
No period, since the wild days of the “railway mania,” was more pregnant of schemes than the later months of 1860. They sprang up like mushrooms all along the Shropshire border, and some of them, like mushrooms, as suddenly suffered decay. A facetious Salopian prophet ventured publicly to predict that “we shall hear next of a railway to Llansilin (a remote village among the border hills) or the moon.” His ratiocination was hardly exaggerated. A “preliminary prospectus” was actually published for carrying a railway, at a cost of under £10,000 per mile, from Shrewsbury, through Kinnerley and Porthywaen, thence “near Llanfyllin and Llanrhaiadr,” to Llangynog, “through the Berwyn hills” to Llandrillo, and so to Dolgelley and Portmadoc. It was to be worked and maintained by the West Midland, Shrewsbury and Coast of Wales Railway Co.; the prospects of mineral and passenger traffic were “most promising,” and throughout its entire length of 90 miles, the promoters pointed out with all the emphasis which italics can afford, “it has only one tunnel, and that slightly exceeding a mile and half in length.” Eventually, a line, partly following this
route, under the less comprehensive title of the West Shropshire Mineral Railway, and later known as “the Potteries,” constructed from a station in Abbey Forgate, Shrewsbury, to Llanymynech, and on to Nantmawr, with a branch from Kinnerley to Criggion, ran for a time, then fell into abeyance and disrepair, and was in recent years re-opened under the Light Railways Act as the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Railway, an independent company.
But, in its original form, the undertaking was apparently to be no friendly competitor with the existing Oswestry and Newtown and associated lines, whose ambition it had, for some time, been to extend its northern terminus, resting on the Great Western branch at Oswestry, through Ellesmere to Whitchurch, there to form a more serviceable junction with the London and North Western from Shrewsbury to Crewe, and the busy hives of Lancashire. But more formidable opposition was already afoot elsewhere. The Great Western, none too eager, as we have seen, to assist independent undertakings in Montgomeryshire, were ready enough to capture traffic in other quarters, and their answer to the Oswestry and Whitchurch project was to formulate a scheme for a branch from Rednal to Ellesmere, with incidental hints about constructing a loop to place Oswestry on their main line. Draughtsmen were busy everywhere with pens and plans. Public halls echoed to the optimistic eloquence of promoters and counter promoters, and powder and shot was being hurriedly got together for the tremendous fusilade in the Parliamentary committee rooms, where, for many a long day, there was to rage and sway the battle for the rights and privileges of bringing the steam engine into the little town of Ellesmere.
For, though wider schemes were involved in the struggle, Ellesmere was the pivot on which arguments and contentions centred. In such a conflict, needless to say, all the old rivalries of “leviathan” interests, of which we have already heard so much, re-emerged. What was still called the “Montgomeryshire party”—the men who had brought the other local railways into existence in spite of well-nigh overwhelming difficulties—continued to look for association with the North Western for greater salvation. Others favoured the chance of obtaining increased facilities for through traffic from the Great Western. Between the two warring elements, Ellesmere itself, as one of its most estimable and influential citizens had put it, believed it was “now or never” for them. In the Parliamentary Committee Rooms, where the evidence occupied thirteen days, and counsels’ speeches several more, the two projects were stubbornly fought out. Great Western witnesses came forward to aver that, owing to the haste with which the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway had been projected, Oswestry had been left too much in the lurch, and the time was now come for reconsideration of its claims to be brought on to the main line. Mr. Sergeant Wheeler, with all the command of forensic eloquence, drew visions of the Shropshire market town as “a great central place of meeting for the people all round.” All that was necessary was to build a line from Oswestry to Rednal, and then the projected branch from Rednal to Ellesmere, and Rednal itself might become a second Rugby or Crewe; who could tell? As to the continuation of such a line from Ellesmere to Whitchurch, true, Paddington was not enthusiastic, but when they found that that was the price demanded for any measure of local support, they were ready to pay it.
In Oswestry there was, naturally enough, a general approval of any step which would place the town on the Great Western main line, and no small point was made of the fact that it would be better to have one station than two. Moreover, Mr. R. J. Croxon. whose words were weighted with the influence of a family solicitor, private banker and town clerk, was of opinion that, apart from anything else, to carry a line, as Mr. Whalley proposed, for two miles by the side of the turnpike to Whittington would be “very dangerous to people driving along,” and the attention of the Trustees ought to be called to it. But, unfortunately for Mr. Croxon and those who shared his fears in this regard, it was the business of the local surveyor to examine the plans, and he was “engaged on the other side.” Thus even among Oswestrians was opinion divided between the rival routes, and men like Alderman Thomas Minshall and Alderman Peploe Cartwright, who had stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight for independent interests in the making of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, were now inclined to regard each others’ sympathies with some suspicion.
Further down the proposed line the weight was thrown rather more decisively in favour of the Whalley scheme. Whitchurch had petitioned against the Great Western proposals, though Captain Cust, who gave evidence for the larger company, was moved to dismiss this effort as the work of “Captain Clement Hill and lot of ragamuffins.” Attempts were even made to disparage the local undertaking by reference to Mr. Savin, who had agreed to carry out the line on similar terms of lease already adopted elsewhere, as a “haberdasher, not in a position to subscribe millions towards railway projects.” In Ellesmere the argument that the Great Western scheme would bring the agricultural area into close touch with the
North Wales coalfields was quickly answered by the counter-plea that the independent company could also build a branch from that spot to Ruabon or Wrexham, and powers to that effect “would be applied for as soon as what may be called the main line from Oswestry to Whitchurch was carried.” Even the larger landowners through whose estates the rival engineers had marched with their instruments differed in their point of approach. Sir John Kynaston, Bart., of Hardwicke, near Ellesmere, who, as someone said, “if he had been left alone, was willing, like Marcus Curtius, to sacrifice himself for the public good, was brought and instructed to give evidence about embankments,” one of which, on Mr. Whalley’s line, by the way, it was supposed (though in error) would shut out his view of the Vale of Llangollen, and “destroy the happiness of his existence for the remainder of his days.” Sir John Hanmer, Bart., M.P., on the other hand, was inclined to become rhapsodic. He looked upon a railway “as a fine work of art,” which any painter might be glad to include in his landscape—only, of course, it must not cut off a landed proprietor from his woods and his other wild grounds, as the Great Western scheme proposed to do, and against this he not only objected but petitioned.
In the end the Committee declared the preamble of the Montgomeryshire party, for their Oswestry, Ellesmere, and Whitchurch Railway to be proved, and that of the Great Western not proved, though the Chairman regretted to add that the finding was not unanimous. In the lobbies rumour had it that it was, in fact, only arrived at by the casting vote of that gentleman himself. Be that as it may, it sufficed. Once again “independent” effort, astutely engineered, had triumphed over the all-powerful interests of a great and wealthy company, and amongst those who had hoped and
feared and hoped again for the success of the Oswestry Ellesmere and Whitchurch scheme enthusiasm knew no bounds.
In Ellesmere a great and excited crowd awaited news from London at the Bridgewater Hotel. They watched for the omnibus from Gobowen, which it was expected might bear the fateful tidings. But either the omnibus failed to arrive, or, if it did, it had no intelligence to impart. Shortly afterwards, however, a special messenger came post haste along the road from Oswestry, and in a moment the news flashed through the little town. “Victory”! An attempt was made to ring the bells, but the churchwarden could not be found, and no one else had authority to pull the ropes. So that the concourse fell back on the time-honoured procession, and led by a drum and fife band, and headed by the Bailiffs, the cheering throng paraded the streets while cannon booming from the market place startled the countryside for a mile or more around. Oswestry, assembled in public meeting, put to flight its town clerk’s gloomy prognostications with hilarious speeches, and outside the more dignified civic circles popular demonstration took still more picturesque form.
The return of a number of witnesses who had gone up to London to give evidence against the local scheme and in support of the Great Western was awaited at the Oswestry station by a hostile crowd. Some delay in their arrival home was occasioned by an untoward incident even before they finally left London. Seating themselves in a first-class compartment in the rear of the train at Paddington, they waited at first patiently and then impatiently for it to start. At last, unable to understand the delay, one of them put out his head and asked a passing official when the train was going. “It has gone” was the laconic reply. The coach
which they had chosen was not attached to the rest of the train, and they were not so meticulously careful about examining tickets on the Great Western system as they are to-day. When the belated passengers did eventually reach Oswestry, the crowd was still there. What was more, they had had time to organise what was deemed a suitable reception. Among the witnesses was a gentleman who, it appeared, had at one time been very short of pence, and, it was alleged, had left his abode without paying the rent. Somehow or another this little fact had been raked up and a number of wags had cut the shape of a latch-key out of a sheet of tin. As he alighted from the train this was dangled before him at the end of a long pole, with a pendant inscription, “Who left the key under the door?”
The promoters of the new undertaking, of which Mr. George Lewis became first secretary, with offices in Oswald Chambers, Oswestry, had every reason for satisfaction. Royal assent was given to their Bill in August, 1861, authorising a capital of £150,000 in £10 shares, with £50,000 on loan, the work to be completed within five years. There were, however, still tough battles to be waged over subsequent efforts to obtain sanction for certain deviations and extensions, against which the Great Western continued to fight tooth and nail with a counter-offensive of their own. No fewer than three distinct schemes were now before the public, with all sorts of loops and junctions at Rednal or Mile End, near Whittington, and branches from Bettisfield to Wem, or to Yorton, and from Ellesmere to Ruabon. But it is an easier task to draw plans on a map than to carry them out. The Wem branch never matured, the link with Denbighshire only after many years, and then to Wrexham and not Ruabon. So far as the main issue was concerned, however, the Great Western again failed