The Story of the Cambrian Part 10

the "Milford," the "Mountaineer," the "Plasffynnon," the "Maglona" and "Gladys," the "Glansevern," the "Tubal Cain," the "Prince of Wales" and the like, and, later the "Beaconsfield" and the "Hartington."

To some of the directors, however, the habit of christening engines, especially after distinguished persons or the seats of the local gentry, seemed to savour of flunkeyism and the custom was abandoned. Only on the London and North Western and the Great Western, and the London Brighton and South Coast, the writer believes, does it still generally obtain, and even there it is limited to the larger pa.s.senger locomotives. Gone, too, is the old decoration of the tenders with the Prince of Wales's plumes, and the only ornamentation of engines and coaches finally left being the Company's crest, the English rose entwined with the Red Dragon of Wales, the original design for which was made and presented to the directors many years ago by the late Mr. W. W. E. Wynne, of Peniarth, Towyn, a noted antiquarian of his day.

[Picture: Mr. Samuel Williamson, General Manager, 1911-1922, and Secretary, 1906-1922]

With the increased weight of engines and coaches necessarily came a strengthening of the road. The rebuilding of the old wooden bridges has already been noted, but some of the girder bridges have been rebuilt also, the last of these, over the Severn at Kilkewydd, near Welshpool, having only been completed last year. This is now a fine structure of four clear spans of more than 60 feet, supported by concrete piers and abutments. Then, too, for the light iron rails laid on a sandy ballast of the old days there have been subst.i.tuted 80 lb. steel rails laid on broken granite ballast, with a corresponding strengthening of the fastenings, sleepers, etc., and to expedite the running of non-stop trains, mainly during the pressure of the tourist season, special appliances have been erected at wayside stations for the exchange of the "tablet," by means of which the working of a single-line railway is controlled, additional pa.s.sing places have been constructed, station platforms in several cases considerably lengthened, and one or two new stations opened, bringing the total on the system up to 100.

During the war when Park Hall, Oswestry, was converted first into a vast training camp and later, in part, into a German Prisoners of War camp, a large amount of military transport work fell to the Cambrian, a network of sidings being constructed through the area occupied, and about a quarter of a million of troops were carried over the system to and fro, an additional strain on the human and mechanical resources of the Company which, however, was most efficiently sustained.

Nor does this entirely exhaust the efforts of the Company to serve the district through which its railways pa.s.s, to increase the comfort and convenience of the travelling public and to augment and proclaim the amenities of the resorts to which it carries us. To this end, two enterprises, though not directly under the control of the Cambrian, but with which they are linked by close co-operative ties, have materially contributed in recent years. Though Mr. Savin's ambitious schemes for erecting hotels to house the tourists whom the trains might bring ended in financial disaster, the idea was an excellent one; and, when revived, some years ago on a more limited scale and under more propitious conditions, it successfully matured in the formation of the Aberystwyth Queen's Hotel Company, of which a prominent Cambrian director, Mr. Alfred Herbert, is chairman, and some other members of the Board, as well as the General Manager, Mr. S. Williamson, are directors, with the a.s.sistant Secretary of the Cambrian, Mr. S. G. Vowles, serving as Secretary. Not the least advantage of this sort of quasi-partners.h.i.+p is the facility which it has enabled the Cambrian to offer to the public in the shape of combined rail and hotel tickets from the princ.i.p.al inland stations on the system, ent.i.tling the visitor to travel to and fro and enjoy the excellent week-end hospitality of the Queen's for an inclusive moderate charge.

It may be truly said, however, that no such allurement is required by those who are already familiar with the charms of Cambria as they unfold themselves in almost illimitable variety all along this western seaboard, stretching from the mouth of the Rheidol right up to the lonely fastnesses of Lleyn. It is, therefore, more particularly to the enlightenment of the uninitiated that the Cardigan Bay Resorts a.s.sociation, of which the Rev. Gwynoro Davies, Barmouth, is chairman and Mr. H. Warwick, superintendent of the Cambrian line (and now its divisional traffic superintendent under the Great Western control), secretary, working in close and sympathetic co-operation, not only with the Cambrian Company, but with several of the local authorities, has done much, year after year, to make known to the potential English tourist the delights which await him on his arrival in these coastal towns.

At any rate the glorious hills and valleys bordering the Bay, which have inspired more than one Welsh literary itinerant to rhapsody, and furnished Mr. Lloyd George with many a homely and figurative peroration, have proved no mean a.s.set to the proprietors of a railway, whose traffic consists so largely of tourists. To the shareholders of the Cambrian has come the satisfaction of knowing that a concern, which was born under, and for many years continued to struggle for its very existence with, the most embarra.s.sing financial conditions, has gradually acquired a more robust economic const.i.tution.

But it has only been accomplished by long and patient conservation of its slender reserves. Mr. Conacher, it used to be said, during his arduous and energetic management, was "improving the Cambrian in the dark." To his successors has been bequeathed the advantage of bringing that quiet sowing to a fruitful and more apparent harvest. Mr. Conacher was succeeded in the secretariat by another wise and diligent officer, the late Mr. Richard Brayne, whose subsequent retirement to a quiet life in the seclusion of the Shrops.h.i.+re village of Kinnerley, was a matter of regret to all who knew and realised his sterling service to the Company.

On the managerial side of the joint-office which Mr. Conacher vacated, following the comparatively short but bustling reign of Mr. Alfred Aslett (during which much was done to redeem the line from an unlucky reputation for unpunctuality that had become locally proverbial), and that of the late Mr. C. S. Denniss, the Company were fortunate in securing for this responsible office, Mr. Samuel Williamson, trained under Mr. Conacher's tutelage, and thus specially fitted to continue that wise and far-seeing policy which had marked his instructor's methods. Under Mr. Williamson's guiding hand, still further a.s.sisted in very valuable fas.h.i.+on by Mr.

Conacher, when, for a few years before his death, in 1911, he was called to the chair of the Board, and since then by a Board of which Major David Davies, M.P., the grandson of one of the foremost of the Cambrian's pioneers is chairman, the financial position of the Company has very materially improved.

This is reflected in the terms of amalgamation with the Great Western Company. In 1908 the stockholders of the Company received the sum of 96,556 pounds, but such was the rapid improvement in the Company's position that in 1913 they received 119,005 pounds, that is to say, in the s.p.a.ce of five years the amount increased by 23.25 per cent., and it was on this basis that the negotiations with the Great Western Company were carried through in 1922, because for the period from 4th August, 1914, to 15th August, 1921, under the arrangement with the Government, the profits of the Company were fixed on the 1913 basis. Commencing as from 1st January, 1922, the terms of amalgamation give to the proprietors of the Cambrian Company an immediate annual income of 119,307 pounds, and this will be increased as from 1st January, 1929, by a further annual sum of 18,161 pounds, a.s.suming the dividend on the Ordinary Stock of the Great Western Company remains as at present, viz:--7.25% per annum, thus making a total of 137,468 pounds. In addition to this improvement, the Company, on the one hand, during the period from 1909 to 1913, cleared off a heavy debt, and, on the other hand, built up very substantial reserves and, in fact, at the end of 1913, the financial position of the Company was stronger than it had ever been.

[Picture: Two Faithful Servants. The late MR. RICHARD BRAYNE, Secretary 1895-1900. MR. T. S. GOLDSWORTHY, Store-keeper, and Senior Officer at the time of its amalgamation with the Great Western]

It has, however, been an agency beyond the control of directorate or internal management which has shaped the final destiny of the Company.

From time to time during the years up to 1914 rumours have circulated concerning the prospective purchase of the Cambrian by one of its great neighbours, either the Great Western, or, more often, the London and North Western, with which it had long maintained a close working alliance. But nothing ever matured in this direction. Cynics were apt to suggest that the explanation might be sought in the parable of the two dogs and the bone, neither of them really wanting it, but each anxious that the other should not get it. Anyhow, it seemed as if the Cambrian would become permanently established as the largest of the independent Welsh Railways, when the Great War plunged, not only this country, but more than half the civilized world into economic chaos. Emerging from its war-time experience of State-control, the Cambrian, like other railways, found itself faced with a hugely-augmented labour bill, to meet which out of potential future revenue, appeared practically impossible.

It was under these embarra.s.sing circ.u.mstances that Sir Eric Geddes, as Minister of Transport, devised his grouping scheme, by which all English, Welsh and Scottish railways are amalgamated in groups as a means to more economical working. Together with all the other independent Welsh Companies, the Cambrian was placed in the Western Group, with the Great Western as absorber, and, the proposal meeting with the approval of the proprietors, to whom the transfer offered, on the whole, a decided financial advantage, while the directors were consoled for loss of office with a grant of 7,000 pounds, it was merely left for the Amalgamation Tribunal to give its final a.s.sent. This was done early in March and on Lady Day, 1922, almost exactly seventy years after its original inception, the Company, as a separate and independent organisation, officially ceased to be.

III.

Such is the story of the Cambrian. If the reasonable limitations imposed on the prolixity of authors.h.i.+p compel its reduction, in these pages, into more or less broad outline, it is not for lack of plentiful material available to the more meticulous student of its details, out of which, it would be easy to weave a hundred volumes. Lying in the lumber cupboards of solicitors' offices up and down Montgomerys.h.i.+re, in the strong rooms of Welsh border banks, or amongst the family archives of some of the great country seats of Powysland, there are to be discovered by the diligent searcher ma.s.ses of old papers, the very existence of which may, perhaps, have been half-forgotten by their present owners, but which waft us back more than half-a-century, and shed varied light on some of the obscurer pa.s.sages in Welsh railway annals.

Early prospectuses, full of glowing promises of rich dividends the hopes of which have long since become as faded as the now yellow leaves on which they were inscribed. Great tomes of carefully-written-out verbatim notes of Parliamentary Committee evidence. Equally voluminous records of judgments delivered in Chancery by ill.u.s.trious law-givers long since dead. "Minutes of Orders on Pet.i.tion," declaring this, that and the other about the safeguarding of certain interests, and the payment of certain dividends--if any funds could be found for the purpose!--and enquiring all sorts of things about "gross receipts" and "monies actually paid into Court, or which shall hereafter be paid into court." Oh, eternal optimism of those early pioneers! Letters from engineers and contractors. Minutes of Board Meetings. Books of accounts of "preliminary expenses," in which "visits to London" seem to bulk so largely and to exhaust so considerable a proportion of the capital subscribed by eager shareholders who believed that some fine day they were to wake to find themselves part owners of a wonderful trunk route yielding illimitable toll upon the wealth of Lancas.h.i.+re and mercantile fleets of the far-reaching seas. They are all there in quaint and often incongruous companions.h.i.+p, and as one turns over their dusty pages and reverently replaces them in their grave of tattered brown paper, one is prompted to reflect, not without a wistful sigh, upon the vanity of human hopes and expectations.

And yet, if the Cambrian never became the great and glorious inst.i.tution which those pioneers and projectors of its initial component parts intended, and sincerely believed it would, can it be either truly or generously said that their labours were in vain? By their courage and determination and resolute struggle against enormous adversity, they did, at least, bring into being a public service which has opened up remote valleys, formed a link between the great centres of England and of South Wales, and the coast of Cardigan Bay, and kindled a new life for and offered the opportunity of increased prosperity to many a small country town in Shrops.h.i.+re, Montgomerys.h.i.+re, and Merioneth. They have created means of employment for thousands of workers, and afforded facilities for recreation for millions more who have thus been enabled and encouraged to spend their holidays amidst the health-giving breezes of the mountains and the sea. And above all they, and their successors in the conduct of the undertaking, with its developing lines, have shown us how, despite the early apathy and even jealousy of neighbouring "giant leviathans," a small independent railway company can faithfully serve its day and generation, until, by one of those unforeseen strokes of irony to which corporate as well as individual life is ever subject, it is thrown by eccentric Fate into the arms of the very Company, under whose protective aegis the originators of the Oswestry and Newtown and the Newtown and Machynlleth Railways so ardently, but vainly, desired to place themselves more than half a century ago.

What may be the outcome of this great change it is yet too early to predict; but, whatever it be, for weal or woe, it is a sad thought to many that what they have so long known, and smiled at, and cursed, and loved as "the poor old Cambrian," officially is no more, and "the debt that cancels all others" is finally discharged.

APPENDIX.

LIST OF CHAIRMEN OF THE CAMBRIAN RAILWAYS SINCE THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE VARIOUS INDEPENDENT UNDERTAKINGS IN 1864.

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL VANE. (Afterwards the Most Hon. The Marquess of Londonderry) (1864-1884)

CAPTAIN R. D. PRYCE (1884-1886)

MR. JAMES FREDERIC BUCKLEY (1886-1900)

MR. ARTHUR CHARLES HUMPHREYS-OWEN, M.P. (1900-1905)

MR. WILLIAM BAILEY HAWKINS (1905-1909)

MR. JOHN CONACHER (1909-1911)

LT.-COL. DAVID DAVIES, M.P. (1911-1922)

LIST OF GENERAL MANAGERS SINCE THE DATE OF CONSOLIDATION.

MR. GEORGE LEWIS (1864-1882)

MR. JOHN CONACHER (1890-1891)

MR. ALFRED ASLETT (1891-1895)

MR. C. S. DENNISS (1895-1910)

MR. S. WILLIAMSON (1911-1922)

(Between 1882 and 1890 and again in 1910-11 there was no General Manager, the office being designated traffic manager).

LIST OF SECRETARIES SINCE THE DATE OF CONSOLIDATION.

MR. GEORGE LEWIS (1864-1882)

MR. JOHN CONACHER (1882-1891)

MR. ALFRED ASLETT (1891-1895)

MR. R. BRAYNE (l895-1900)

MR. C. S. DENNISS (1900-1906)

MR. S. WILLIAMSON (1906-1922)

LIST OF DIRECTORS AND OFFICIALS AT THE DATE OF AMALGAMATION, 27th MARCH, 1922.

_DIRECTORS_--

Chairman: LT.-COL. DAVID DAVIES, M.P., Broneirion, Llandinam, Mont.