The Story of the Cambrian

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THE STORY OF THE CAMBRIAN

A Biography of a Railway
by
C. P. GASQUOINE
(Editor of the "Border Counties Advertizer.")

[Picture: Cambrian Railways Company stamp]

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 role 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.

[Picture: Directors & Offices on a Farewell Visit to Aberystwyth, May
1922. Reading from left to right:--Mr. W. K. Minshall (Solicitor); Sir
Joseph Davies, M.P.; Mr. Alfred Herbert; Lord Kenyon; Lt.-Col. Apperley;
Mr. G. C. McDonald (Engineer and Loco. Supt.); Mr. S. G. Vowles
(Assistant-Sec.); Mr. C. B. O. Clarke; Mr. H. Warwick (Supt. of Line);
Mr. T. Craven (Deputy Chairman); Lt.-Col. David Davies, M. P. (Chairman);
Mr. T. C. Sellars (General Manager's Assistant); Mr. S. Williamson
(General Manager and Secretary). Photo by H. H. Davies & Son,
Aberystwyth]

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.

[Picture: Some Parents of the Cambrian: reading top left to bottom right:
The later MR. DAVID DAVIES, M.P., one of the first contractors; The late
MR. THOMAS SAVIN, Mr. Davies's first partner and a contractor of other
parts of the line; The late MR. BENJAMIN PIERCY, Engineer of many of the
early lines; The late MR. ABRAHAM HOWELL, Solicitor of the Oswestry and
Newtown, and a promoter of Montgomeryshire Rys]

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, Pale, 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.

[Picture: The late MR. G. H. WHALLEY, M.P., from a Portrait presented by
the citizens of Peterborough, and now hanging in Peterborough Museum]

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."

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