The Story of the Cambrian

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Anyhow, there was plenty of fun to be got out of the experience. "The
doors of the old coaches were narrow, and many a tussle to get inside
occurred. One lady in particular who was very stout and a regular
passenger on a certain train, always had to be assisted both in and
out--the stationmaster pulling and the guard pushing, while the fireman
was enjoying the joke. One morning, when the train was a few minutes
late, the guard came running up to the front with his 'Hurry up, Missis,'
when the old dame, with her two baskets, an umbrella, similar in size to
a modern camping tent, and a crinoline fashionable in mid-Victorian days,
got firmly wedged in the door way, whereupon some wag suggested that, to
expedite departure, a break-down gang and crane should be sent for and
the lady hoisted into an open cattle waggon."

II.

But even with all the care which the management enjoined from the first,
accidents were, perhaps, not altogether unavoidable. Sometimes the
errant "human factor" showed itself in tragic fashion even in those
distant days. By a melancholy coincidence, the first serious mishap
occurred close to Abermule, a name since associated in the public memory
with the last and the worst catastrophe in Cambrian annals.

It was on a November morning in 1861 that a goods train leaving Newtown
for Welshpool, called at Abermule, where they picked up three wagons and
some water. But, unfortunately, there was time--or they thought there
was time--for the driver, fireman, and guard to adjourn to the adjacent
inn, where they took up something rather stronger than the engine's
refreshment. Time fled, as it is apt to do in such circumstances, and
when the staff rejoined the train, an effort appears to have been made to
gain lost minutes, with the result that the train ran off the line, and
driver, known to his comrades as "Hell-fire Jack," and fireman were
killed. An inquest was held before Dr. Slyman, coroner, one of the most
enthusiastic promoters of the Montgomeryshire lines, and the jury
solemnly found that "the accident was the result of furious driving," but
they exonerated from blame everyone but "the unfortunate driver."

[Picture: An Early Cambrian Coach with its Makers. In Coach: Edward
Morgan (3rd from right), Job Thomas, E. Shone. Back Row (left to right):
1, (Unidentified); 2, John Thomas; 3, E. Windsor; 4, R. Williams: 5, W.
Parry; 6, J. Richards (foreman); 7, S. Holland; 8, Rd. Davies; 9, Edward
Lewis (living); 10, J. Powell; 11, Lazarus Jones; 12, E. Price. Front
Row (left to right): 1 (Unidentified); 2, J. Astley; 3 and 4, Boys; 5,
Joe Ward; 6, Wm. Jones; 7, T. Morgan; 8, "Fat Charlie"; 9, R. Morgan; 10,
John Sanger (brother-in-law of Mr. George Lewis, General Manager); 11,
David Davies, Aberystwyth (living)]

But the "human factor" is not the only element of nature with which
railway management has to contend. Another, not less serious in its
potential consequences, was brought to mind in sinister fashion a few
years later, when, during the winter storms of 1868, the Severn and its
tributaries rose in flood with such alarming rapidity that the driver of
an early morning goods train from Machynlleth to Newtown found, as he ran
down the long decline from Talerddig past Carno, that the water was
washing over the footplate of the engine, and nearly put out the fire.
He naturally bethought him of the wooden bridge over the Severn at
Caersws, but, after, careful examination, it was safely crossed. On the
return journey, however, the bridge was being carefully approached once
more, when, in the dim dawn of a February morning, the engine suddenly
toppled-over the embankment abutting on the structure. The floods had
washed away the earthworks, though the beams of the bridge itself held
fast, and driver and fireman were killed. Word was sent to Oswestry and
Aberystwyth, and in the first passenger train from the latter place Capt.
Pryce, one of the directors, and Mr. Elias, the traffic manager, were
travelling to the scene of the disaster, when it was discovered that
another bridge, near Pontdolgoch, was giving way under pressure of the
torrent, and the train, crowded with passengers, was only held up just in
time to avert what could not have failed to prove a catastrophe far more
tragic in extent.

Wild rumours quickly spread concerning the cause and nature of the actual
mishap, it being freely stated by sensation-mongers that the Severn
bridge had collapsed; but Mr. David Davies, who had been its builder and
was now a director of the Company, was able to show that, despite the
exceptional strain on the construction, the bridge had resisted the force
of the flood and was as firm as ever. Wooden bridges, however, have now
had their day, and in recent years have, in all important cases, under
the enterprising supervision of Mr. G. C. McDonald, the Company's
engineer and locomotive superintendent, been replaced with iron girders,
to the undisguised regret of some old-fashioned believers in the efficacy
of British oak!

This section of the line, indeed, flanked not only by the rivers liable
to flood, but curving its way up steep gradients, over high embankments
and through deep cuttings, is necessarily more subject to mishaps than a
level road, and it is hardly astonishing that it has been the scene of
more than one awkward circumstance. Among them is the story, still told
more or less _sotto voce_, of how, close to this spot, the driver of an
express goods train, long ago, might have killed the then Chairman of the
Company! The night was wet, and the driver, accustomed to a straight run
down the bank to Moat Lane, was astonished to find the signals against
him at Carno. He applied the brakes, but it was no easy matter suddenly
to curb the speed of a heavy train, and he floundered on, right into a
"special" toiling up the hill bearing Earl Vane home to Machynlleth.
{118} Happily for everyone concerned, no great damage was done; Board of
Trade officials were less inquisitive in those days, and it seems to have
been easier then than it is now to "keep things out of the newspapers"!

Less easy to hide was the huge landslide, many years later, of a portion
of Talerddig cutting, though on this occasion no accident resulted to any
train, and the worst fate that befel the passengers was that, during the
considerable time occupied in clearing the line--it was at the height of
the tourist season, too--they and their baggage had to be conveyed by
road for a mile or two, an arduous task accomplished by the Company's
officials without a single mishap.

Such happenings in such a character of country are practically
inevitable, but it was not until the Cambrian had been in existence, as a
combined organisation, for nearly twenty years, that its story was
interrupted, through such a cause, by what was truly described as "the
most alarming accident which had ever occurred on the system." In point
of death-roll it was not more melancholy than that at Caersws, but its
scene and its dramatic nature provided a new feature which intimately
touched the public imagination. For it was the first serious disaster in
the annals of these undertakings to a passenger train, and, though not
one of them was even injured, the hair-breadth escape of several was
thrilling enough.

On New Year's Day, 1883, the evening train from Machynlleth for the coast
line, drawn by the "Pegasus," driven by William Davies, whose fireman
bore a similar name, on reaching the Barmouth end of the Friog decline,
built on the shelf of the rock overlooking the sea, struck a mass of
several tons of soil, which had suddenly fallen from the steep
embankment, together with a portion of retaining wall. The engine and
tender appear to have passed the obstruction and then were hurled to the
rocks below. Most fortunately the couplings between the tender and the
coaches broke, and though the first carriage overturned, and lay
perilously poised over the ledge, it did not fall. The next coach also
overturned, but in safer position, and probably held up the first.

The remaining coach, which contained most of the passengers, and the van
remained on the rails. Amongst those in the train was Captain Pryce,
once more fortunate in his deliverance from death, and he and others
immediately did what was possible to release the rest from danger. In
the overhanging carriage was one old lady, Mrs. Lloyd, of Welshpool, a
well-known character at Towyn, where she carried on a successful business
in merchandise, and, save for severe and very natural fright, she was got
out without sustaining further harm.

The news of the accident soon spread abroad, and reached Dolgelley, where
a great Eisteddfod was being held. From this assembly Dr. Hugh Jones and
Dr. Edward Jones, well-known medical men over the countryside, with
others, hurried to the scene. But the driver and fireman were beyond the
range of their skill. With bashed heads they lay, the former in the
tender and latter beside the "Pegasus," on the huge rocks that flank the
shore. Searching inquiry was made into the cause of the accident, and
though evidence was forthcoming that the utmost care was taken to watch
that section of the line, and Mr. George Owen, the engineer, and Mr.
Liller, the traffic manager, were able to show that all the
recommendations and regulations of the Board of Trade officials had been
complied with in protecting this awkward cutting, the jury considered the
place unsafe and hoped the Railway Company would "do something to prevent
occurrence of a similar accident."

Such occurrences, alas! are not entirely within the compass of human
power to control, but, as a matter of fact, no such "similar accident"
has during its history ever happened at Friog or anywhere else on the
Cambrian system. It was, indeed, not for more than fourteen years that
serious catastrophe attended the working of the railway, and then the
cause seems to have been as uncontrollable as ever. Late one Friday
evening in June, 1897, a Sunday School excursion train from Royton in
Lancashire, drawn by two engines, was returning from Barmouth, and, close
to Welshampton station, only a few miles short of quitting the Cambrian
at Whitchurch, left the rails, overturning several coaches and
telescoping others. The circumstances were the more pathetic by reason
of the fact that most of the passengers were children, homeward bound,
after a joyous day by the sea. Nine were killed outright, two died later
in hospital, and many others were more or less seriously injured. Dr. R.
de la Poer Beresford of Oswestry, medical officer to the Cambrian Railway
Co., and many other professional and lay helpers, rendered gallant
service, and the railway ambulance corps were a valuable adjunct in the
arduous task of dealing with the great work of tending the wounded.

There was some little difficulty in ascertaining the exact cause of the
accident, but the Coroner's jury were satisfied that there was "no
negligence on the part of any of the officials," and were of opinion that
the disaster would not have happened but for a Lancashire and Yorkshire
four-wheeled brake van in the front of the train, which, it was stated,
had been "running rough." Searchers after portents were quick to recal
that in his famous "Almanack," exactly opposite the actual date of the
disaster, "Old Moore" had stated that he was "afraid he must foretell a
terrible railway collision in the middle of June." It was not a
collision, but the gift of prophecy received sufficient endorsement to
create no small sensation amongst country folk.

Nor is this part of our story, unfortunately, complete without reference
to an actual head-on collision,--an occurrence extremely rare in British
railway annals--of even more appalling result in loss of life, than
Welshampton. Of that day, early in 1921 when, through a most
extraordinary and tragic series of misunderstandings amongst the staff at
Abermule station the slow down train was allowed to proceed towards
Newtown to meet the up express from Aberystwyth, on the curve a mile
away, such vivid memories still linger that little need be recounted here
of its harrowing details. The total death-roll, the largest in Cambrian
records, was 17, and the victims included one of the most esteemed of the
directorate, Lord Herbert Vane-Tempest. Here, at any rate, it was again
that mysterious element, "the human factor," rather than any condition of
the works or of the rolling stock used which played its melancholy part,
and of that it is sufficient to say that the most interesting feature of
the protracted official inquiry into the circumstances was the fact that
the men concerned were represented at the inquest by the Rt. Hon. J. H.
Thomas, M.P., as General Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen,
and his skilful conduct of the case was, apparently, a notable and
important influence in determining the final--and reconsidered--verdict
of the coroners jury.

[Picture: The late LORD HERBERT VANE-TEMPEST, a Director of the Company
(who was fatally injured in the Abermule accident, 1921)]

III.

But these are sorrowful records from which we gladly turn to the lighter
side of railway annals. As a link between them we may mention one
"accident" which happily unattended with very serious results in itself,
was the direct cause of a famous, and at the time, a sensational
"incident." In 1887 the down morning mail train ran off the line at
Ellesmere and it was held that this was due to delay on the part of the
porter in not being at the points in time to work them properly. For at
this time the interlocking system, made compulsory under the Act of 1889,
had not been installed, and the safety of trains depended on due
attention to the pointsman's functions. When, in 1891, a Committee of
the House of Commons, of which Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was chairman, sat
to inquire into the length of railway hours, the Ellesmere mishap was
brought up as an example of what occurred when railway servants were
expected to work for long stretches, though Mr. John Conacher (who had
joined the Company's staff in 1865, become secretary on the retirement of
Mr. George Lewis in 1882, and later had succeeded to the managership) was
able to produce evidence that it was not so much weariness of the flesh
as the fact that the porter was playing cards with a postman waiting with
the mails and a stranded passenger waiting for the train which led to his
late arrival at the points.

The porter was consequently dismissed, whereupon a memorial praying for
his re-instatement was signed, amongst others, by the then Ellesmere
stationmaster, the late Mr. John Hood. This appeared to the management
so undesirable an attitude for a stationmaster to take in the matter of
service discipline that he was temporarily suspended and removed from
Ellesmere,--a step which, it was publicly explained, had been
contemplated some years before the accident, but not carried out,--to
Montgomery. Mr. Hood himself gave evidence before the Parliamentary
Committee, alleging that the mishap was due to the rotten condition of
the permanent way, and though this created a good deal of sensation and
alarm, public assurance was promptly restored when it was pointed out
that such a conclusion was entirely rebutted by the report issued by the
Board of Trade Inspector as a result of his personal examination of the
line immediately after the accident.

Probably little, if anything, more might have been heard of the affair,
for the Select Committee had risen for the Parliamentary recess, were it
not that the directors, carrying out a detailed examination of their own
into the circumstances brought to light again by the inquiry, had laid
before them a recommendation by their chief officials on which, rightly
or wrongly, wisely or unwisely, they decided to dispense with Mr. Hood's
services altogether. Mr. Hood was summoned to Crewe, where he had an
interview with the Chairman of the Company, Mr. J. F. Buckley, who was
accompanied by two of his colleagues on the Board,--Mr. Bailey-Hawkins
and Mr. J. W. Maclure, M.P., and Mr. Conacher, the manager, but to a
memorial in favour of the stationmaster's reinstatement, they declined to
accede.

The fat was now in the fire, and a very fierce blaze ensued. It lit up
the industrial world, then struggling into organic solidarity, with lurid
flames, and there were those who had some trading or personal grievance
against the company, who not less eagerly threw on fresh fuel of their
own. Protest meetings were held at Wrexham and Newtown, at which
resolutions were carried condemnatory of "excessive hours," and the late
Mr. A. C. Humphreys-Owen, of Glansevern, though he had not been present
at the Crewe conclave, was, as a director of the Company and a
prospective Parliamentary candidate for the Denbigh Boroughs, singled out
for special attack, and as warmly defended by some of his friends.

Mr. Harford, general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway
Servants of the United Kingdom, with what was, perhaps, an unconscious
gift of prophecy, declared that "little railways were a gigantic mistake,
and the sooner the better they are taken over by some larger concern, for
the workmen and the shareholders." The Labour Press echoed with
resounding phrases about "Cambrian tyranny," and "victimisation," and Mr.
Hood was acclaimed a martyr of overbearing officialism.

More serious was the attitude and the action of Parliament. The House of
Commons, ever quick to resent any appearance of tampering with its
"privileges," were sensitive to the suggestion of what seemed to them
some interference with a witness before their Select Committee, and not
long after the new Session opened, in 1892, Mr. Conacher, who had,
meanwhile, left the Cambrian, to the regret of the Board and many others,
to assume the larger responsibility of management of the North British
Railway Co., was summoned from Edinburgh to appear, with Mr. Buckley and
Mr. Bailey-Hawkins, at the Bar of the House to receive the admonition of
Mr. Speaker Peel. Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Maclure, being a Member of
the House, was at the same time required to stand in his place, where,
with bowed head, that burly and genial gentleman, looked very like a
schoolboy listening to the stern rebuke of a formidable headmaster!

"Toby M.P.," glancing down from his seat in the Press Gallery on this
rare and impressive scene, has described it in the pages of "Punch" in
characteristic fashion:--

"Thursday, _April_ 7_th_.

"The Chairman of Cambrian Railways held a special meeting at Bar. It
was attended by Mr. Bailey-Hawkins, and Mr. John Conacher, Manager of
the Company . . . The latter, resolved to sell his life dearly,
brought in his umbrella, which gave him a quite casual
hope-I-don't-intrude appearance as he stood at the Bar. Members, at
first disposed to regard the whole matter as a joke, cheered Maclure
when he came in at a half-trot; laughed when the Bar pulled out,
difficulty arose about making both ends meet . . . Bursts of laughter
and buzz of conversation in all parts of the House; general aspect
more like appearance at theatre on Boxing Night, when audience waits
for curtain to rise on new pantomime. Only the Speaker grave, even
solemn; his voice occasionally rising above the merry din with stern
cry of 'Order! Order!'

"Hicks-Beach's speech gave new and more serious turn to affairs.
Concluded with Motion declaring Directors guilty of Breach of
Privilege and sentencing them to admonition. But speech itself
clearly made out that Directors were blameless; all the bother lying
at door of Railway Servant who had been dismissed. Speech, in short,
turned its back on Resolution. This riled the Radicals; not to be
soothed even by Mr. G. interposing in favourite character as Grand
Old Pacificator. Storm raged all night; division after division
taken; finally, long past midnight, Directors again brought up to the
Bar, the worn, almost shrivelled, appearance of Conacher's umbrella
testifying to the mental suffering undergone during the seven hours
that had passed since last they stood there.

"Speaker, with awful mien and in terrible tones, 'admonished' them;
and so to bed."

The chief actors in this arresting and peculiar drama have now all past
from the stage, almost the last survivor, Mr. Hood himself, dying in
1920, after a long career of public service in the local administration
of civic affairs at Ellesmere, and not before, through the gracious good
offices of the last General Manager, Mr. Samuel Williamson, full and
formal reconciliation had taken place between him and the Company.

[Picture: Four General Managers. The late MR. GEORGE LEWIS, General
Manager and Secretary, 1864-1882. The late MR. JOHN CONACHER, General
Manager, 1890-1891, Secretary, 1882-1891. MR. ALFRED ASLETT, General
Manager and Secretary, 1891-1895. The late MR. C. S. DENNISS, General
Manager, 1895-1910, Secretary, 1900-1906]

Rare, indeed, is such an "incident" in the annals of any British Railway.
Much rarer, at any rate, than another cause for special managerial
anxiety, though not untinged with pride,--the conveyance of a Royal
passenger. In this respect the Company, particularly in more recent
years, has borne its full share of responsibility and sustained it with
adequate cause for self satisfaction. Queen Victoria, though she visited
North Wales in the eighties, travelled by another route, and the first
Royal train to pass over any part of the Cambrian system was that which
bore King Edward VII. and Queen Alexandra, when Prince and Princess of
Wales, on their visit to Machynlleth and Aberystwyth, for the former's
installation as Chancellor of the University of Wales in the middle of
June, 1896, and on the same occasion another distinguished traveller
along the line from Wrexham to Aberystwyth was Mr. Gladstone.

Eight years later, in July 1904, the late King and his Consort journeyed
over the Mid-Wales section to Rhayader, to participate in the opening of
the Birmingham Water Works, and thence to Welshpool on their way to
London. On March 16th, 1910, King George, as Prince of Wales, passed
over the Cambrian on his way to Four Crosses, to perform a similar
ceremony in connection with the extension of the Liverpool Waterworks at
Lake Vyrnwy, and the longest of all monarchical tours over the system was
when, in the middle of July, 1911, King George, Queen Mary, and other
members of the Royal family proceeded from Carnarvon via Afonwen and the
Coast section to Machynlleth as guests at Plas Machynlleth, the following
day to Aberystwyth for the foundation stone-laying of the Welsh National
Library, and two days later, from Machynlleth to Whitchurch on their way
to Scotland.

The last Royal journey was a short one, again over the Mid-Wales section,
in July 1920, to enable the King to inaugurate the Welsh National
Memorial institution at Talgarth, on which occasion his Majesty was
graciously pleased to express high appreciation of the facilities ever
afforded by the Board and management whenever he travelled over their
system. And on this gratifying note we may appropriately bring our
record of Cambrian "incidents" to a close.

CHAPTER XI. THE CAMBRIAN OF TO-DAY.

"_To stretch the octave 'twixt the dream and deed_,
_Ah! that's the thrill_."--RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.

I.

And so, by devious routes and with many a halt by the way, we come to the
Cambrian of to-day. In such a chronicle as this demarcations of time
must necessarily appear more or less arbitrary, and if we include under
this heading a period which goes back to 1904, it is merely because it is
from that year the system has, with only some subsequent minor extensions
in mileage, assumed the organic form familiar to us at the present time.
For it was then that the policy of amalgamation, entered upon forty years
earlier with the consolidation of the various independent companies, was
carried forward another important stage, and it is since that date the
most significant developments, both in road and rolling stock, made
necessary by the ever-increasing demands of modern traffic conditions,
have mainly been accomplished.

[Picture: Officers of the Cambrian Railways at the date of Amalgamation,
March 25th, 1922. Left to Right: Seated--W. Finchett (Goods Manager), R.
Williamson (Accountant), G. C. McDonald (Engineer and Locomotive
Superintendent), S. Williamson (Secretary and General Manager), W. K.
Minshall (Solicitor), T. S. Goldsworthy (Storekeeper), H. Warwick
(Superintendent of the Line). Standing--E. Colclough (Works Manager), J.
Williamson (Assistant Engineer), S. G. Vowles (Assistant Secretary), J.
Burgess and T. C. Sellars (Assistants to the General Manager)]

As far back as February 1888, the question of merging the Mid-Wales
Railway came before the Cambrian directors, under the earnest pressure of
Mr. Benjamin Piercy. It was not long before even wider schemes of mutual
co-operation among the railways of the Principality were being publicly
discussed, under the aegis of what was termed the Welsh Railway Union,
for which facilities were sought, by means of a private Bill. A
deputation, introduced by Sir George Osborne Morgan (as he afterwards
became) and headed by Mr. (later Sir John) Maclure and Sir Theodore
Martin, waited on Sir Michael-Hicks Beach, at the Board of Trade. Under
this scheme all the lesser Welsh railways were to form a link for through
traffic, by way of the projected Dee Bridge and Wrexham to South Wales;
but, though nothing materialised at the time, there was something of
intelligent anticipation about the appointment, in 1891, of Mr. Conacher,
as manager of the Neath and Brecon Railway, one of the parties to the
proposal, in addition to his management of the Cambrian. Very soon
afterwards, however, Mr. Conacher left for the North British and the
joint office was terminated. But another significant new link in the
"Welsh Union" chain was forged in 1895, with the construction of the
Wrexham and Ellesmere Railway, which, though an independent Company, with
the Hon. George T. Kenyon, M.P., as its first chairman and Mr. O. S. Holt
as secretary, was from the outset worked by the Cambrian, and thus formed
a new direct connection from that Company's system, into the Denbighshire
coal-field, and hence, by the Wrexham, Mold and Connah's Quay, later
absorbed by the Great Central, into Chester and the Merseyside.

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