Chapter 3

"_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.

[Picture: Some early Chairmen: reading from top left to bottom, The late EARL VANE (afterwards Marquis Of Londonderry). Chairman of the Newtown and Machynlleth railway Co. and first Chairman of the Consolidated Cambrian Rys. Co., 1864-1884; The late MR. W. ORMSBY-GORE, First Chairman of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway Co.; The late SIR W. W. WYNN, BART., Second Chairman of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway Co.]

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 pounds,--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 manoeuvre 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 0.25th 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 pounds out of a total capital of 400,000 pounds 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 pounds in cash, towards relieving the chairman from a personal liability of 75,000 pounds, 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 pounds over and above the Parliamentary deposit of 18,000 pounds 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."

[Picture: Sod cutting ceremony of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, at Welshpool, on August 4th, 1857]

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.

Flags and Banners.

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.