The Story of the Cambrian Part 8

One such difficulty, indeed, ultimately proved a blessing in disguise.

In 1884, at the instance of the Company's bankers, the line was placed in the hands of a Receiver, Mr. John Conacher, fortunately, being chosen for this office. The line was ripe for a great and final effort to place the undertaking on a firmer footing, and, together with the late Mr. A. C.

Humphreys-Owen, Mr. Conacher drew up a scheme of arrangement between the Company and its creditors under which about seventy different stocks were consolidated into ten; and it was their patient and skilful work in thus formulating what became known as the scheme of 1885, that laid the foundation of the Company's improved financial position of which the proprietors and the public have reaped the benefit in subsequent years.

Meantime, however, other matters not directly bearing on finance, engaged the attention of the directors. Amongst these was the question of the works, which it was found necessary to erect, since the Company was working its own line. In July 1864, the inhabitants of Welshpool, conscious of the prominent part which the town had played in the inauguration of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, presented a memorial to the board in which they urged its central position on the system and the recent completion of the waterworks as strong arguments for favourable consideration of the borough's claims to such an advantage. Nor was it without an eye to future development that Welshpool station was built in a manner capable of allowing its upper stories to be used as the Company's offices. Here, for the brief s.p.a.ce, the offices were, but in both these cases ambitious Poolonians were doomed to disappointment.

[Picture: The late MR. A. C. HUMPHREYS-OWEN, M.P. Chairman, 1900-1905]

The official headquarters of the Newtown and Machynlleth Railway Company were destined for some time to remain at Machynlleth, where Mr. David Howell, its secretary, practised as a solicitor; but in January 1862 the staff of the Oswestry and Newtown had removed from Welshpool, and, together with those of the Llanidloes and Newtown, the Oswestry, Ellesmere and Whitchurch, the Buckley and the Wrexham Mold and Connah's Quay, jointly occupied two rooms on the second floor of No. 9a, Cannon Row, Westminster, Mr. George Lewis being secretary of all five companies.

On the floor below the Aberystwyth and Welsh Coast Company cohabited with some dozen slate and stone companies, while Mr. Benjamin Piercy sat in state hard by in Great George Street, and Mr. Thomas Savin weaved his ambitious schemes around the corner, at No. 7, Delahay Street, with Mr.

James Fraser (father of the auditor of the Cambrian in recent years) acting, under power of attorney, as his manager. This proved quite a convenient arrangement so long as Parliamentary Committee work absorbed much of the time of these officials, and here all the companies held their board meetings, generally on the same day.

There were stirring times without, and it is scarcely strange if Cannon Row did not live up to the reputation of its suggestive name. Rows, indeed, were frequent and occasionally threatened to reverberate beyond the walls of the official sanctum. There is an old and honoured Cambrian official, then a young clerk sitting at his desk in the office above the board room, who remembers the occasion when an extraordinary scene was enacted on that dusty little stage. From a scuffle of some sort in the board room Mr. Gartside, a Director of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway Company, beat a hasty retreat up the stairs to the clerk's room, closely pursued by Mr. Whalley. Mr. Gartside being rather portly, was much out of breath, and suddenly pausing and turning round to recover himself on gaining the hearthrug he received Mr. Whalley's fist full in the stomach, which completed his exhaustion. Recovering his breath and as much of his dignity as the circ.u.mstances would permit, the disabled Director appealing dramatically to the astonished clerks, exclaimed "Gentlemen, I call on you to witness that the hon. Member for Peterboro' has struck me." But the clerks unable to grapple with so unaccustomed a situation, beat a hasty retreat, and nothing more was heard of what was presumably a more or less accidental "a.s.sault."

From Great George Street, the offices were subsequently moved to No. 3, Westminster Chambers, and soon after Mr. Savin's failure, in 1866, when the directors took over the working of the line from the unfortunate lessee, after a short trial of another London office, the Secretary and his staff, in August of that year, packed up pens, ink, paper and doc.u.ments and settled themselves in Oswestry, where they have since remained. In Oswestry, too, on a site under the Shelf Bank, close to where the first sod on the Ellesmere and Oswestry line was cut, the works were erected and have continued to be maintained.

[Picture: Oswestry station and Company's Head Offices. Reproduced from the "Great Western Magazine."]

On a subsequent occasion, however, they were the ostensible cause of one of those sudden storms which, as we have said, from time to time a.s.sailed the board-room or even periodical a.s.semblies of the proprietors. On this occasion it was, indeed, a bolt from the blue. A few days before the date fixed for the half yearly meeting, at Crewe, in February 1879, there had been placed in the hands of the shareholders a pamphlet bearing the innocent t.i.tle "Cambrian Railways Workshops." But, when they read it, the recipients discovered that, whatever the reason for the choice of such a heading, the sermon was founded on a much wider text. It traversed the whole policy of the Board, the const.i.tution of the Company and the management of its property, and it was written in highly censorious terms. That, in itself, might have been of comparatively little moment, for the directors were not without their critics--no directors of public companies ever are. But the author, who did not withhold his name, was Mr. David Davies, constructor of much of the line and now one of the most influential directors. Here, apparently, was a matter for serious concern, and the seriousness was not diminished when to the pamphlet itself was added a speech, at the shareholders' meeting, in which Mr. Davies did not scruple to suggest that the line was being expensively worked, that the rolling stock had not been adequately maintained, that the road was defective and that, some of the stock being worthless, the whole undertaking was in a false position. It was what Earl Vane (now become Marquess of Londonderry), who presided, called "a stab in the dark." The stab in the open with which Mr. Davies followed it up was certainly not less sensational. He declared that "the line at the moment was not safe, and he should not be at all surprised to see the rails sprinkled with human blood before they were very much older." He alleged that a fellow director (Mr. S. H. Hadley) had expressed a wish to see the Oswestry shops burnt down and new shops erected at Aberystwyth instead. The balance-sheet was "an insult." He washed his hands of the whole affair and demanded a Committee of Inquiry. A hub-bub ensued, amidst which it was not impertinently pointed out that Mr. Davies had himself laid much of the road which he now condemned, and, backed by a letter from Mr. George Owen, the engineer, it was shown that his strictures on its existing condition were unsubstantiated by facts. But Mr. Davies stuck to his guns, and before what was well described in the local Press as "a stormy meeting" terminated, he had left the room and his seat on the Board. It was a matter of doubt, for some moments, whether the n.o.ble Chairman would not go too, but, happily, he discovered enough signs of confidence among the proprietors present to encourage him to continue his thankless task.

It was a tremendous tempest while it lasted, but it was soon over. At the next half-yearly meeting, in the following August, the directors were able to report that, instead of spilt blood, the summer had brought a considerably increased weight of tourist traffic, hearty congratulations were showered on Mr. George Lewis, the Secretary, on his efficient administration of the line, and Capt. R. D. Pryce, presiding, in the absence of the Marquess, concluded the proceedings on a happy note of a.s.surance that directors and shareholders were "of one mind," and full of sanguine expectations as to the future of their undertaking. The throes of consolidation are sometimes not less severe than those of birth itself, but they can be as successfully survived.

CHAPTER X. INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS.

"_Railway travelling is safer than walking, riding, driving, than going up and down stairs . . . and even safer than eating_, _because it is a fact that more people choke themselves in England than are killed on all the railways of the United Kingdom_."--THE LATE SIR EDWARD WATKIN.

Looking back on considerably more than half a century of history it is no small tribute to human care and human ingenuity that serious accidents on the Cambrian Railways have been relatively rare. This is all the more remarkable because all but some twelve miles of its total length, and up to a few years ago, not even as much as that, has had to be worked on a single line, and with the rapidly increasing tourist traffic of recent times, this has placed a strain on both the human and the metallic machine which may easily try the strongest nerves and the most powerful appliances. Obviously it is due to the special care taken in management, and observed, with few if tragic exceptions, by those directly responsible for the working of the trains.

Early in their inception, elaborate regulations were drawn up by the organisers of the original local undertakings, of which a copy, issued by the Oswestry and Newtown Company, as adopted "at a meeting of the Board of Directors, held on Sat.u.r.day, the 25th February, 1860," and preserved among the papers of the late Mr. David Howell of Machynlleth, gives some interesting indication. It is bound in vellum, fitted with a clasp, and adorned within with a series of woodcuts, descriptive of the old-day signalman, clad in tall hat, tail coat and white trousers, explanatory of the hand signal code, with flags, which preceded the more general use of the modern signals, controlled from a signal box. Following the precept, made familiar by the nursery rhymes of our childhood, it informs us that

"RED is a signal of DANGER, and to STOP.

GREEN is a signal of CAUTION, and to GO SLOWLY.

WHITE is a Signal of ALL RIGHT, and to GO ON.

As an additional precaution, should no flag be handy, it warns drivers that "anything moved violently up and down or a man holding both hands up is a sign of danger."

Some of these early regulations were extremely primitive. For instance, long before the scientific system of the block telegraph and the tablet were thought out, it was deemed sufficient to ordain that "On a Train or Engine stopping at or pa.s.sing an intermediate station or Junction, a STOP Signal must be exhibited for FIVE minutes, after which a CAUTION Signal must be exhibited for FIVE minutes more." After that, apparently, any train might proceed--and take its risk of the one in front having reached the next signalling point! At level crossings at any distance from the signalman, the gate-keeper was advised to "ring a small hand-bell, or use a whistle to call the attention of the signalman, who must then put up his 'Danger' signals."

[Picture: An Early Cambrian Pa.s.senger Engine. Original Form (top), As Re-built (bottom)]

The guard of the first pa.s.senger train from Oswestry was instructed to "set his timepiece by the Platform Clock, and give the Clerk at every station the time, so that he may regulate the clock at his station by it," and similar arrangements operated up the branch lines. Porters were told that on the arrival of a train they were to "walk the length of the platform and call out, in a clear and audible voice, the name of the station opposite the window of each carriage; and at Junctions the doors of every carriage must be opened, and the various changes announced to all pa.s.sengers"--a regulation which, if still on the rule-book, is, like that against receiving tips, nowadays more often honoured in the breach than in the observance. It was even felt obligatory to include a regulation as to what should be done if a train should arrive before its advertised time, though it must appear a little superfluous to those who remember the ways of the Cambrian in those happy days, when a captious correspondent could write to the local Press to aver that, after seeing his father off at Welshpool station, he was able to ride on horseback to Oswestry and meet him on his arrival there! It was certainly a remarkable feat--though, perhaps, not so remarkable either--for, as "an official" of the Company was moved to explain in a subsequent issue, the old gentleman must have travelled by a goods train, to which pa.s.senger coaches were attached "for the convenience of the public," and it "often did not leave Welshpool until an hour after the advertised time."

Those "mixed trains" survived until some thirty years ago, when an unregenerate Board of Trade regulation prohibited them, and the wonderful jolts and jars which the public experienced for their "convenience" and the benefit of their liver, if not their nerves, became a thing of the past. But, as an old driver remarked to the writer not long ago,--"It was very comfortable working in those days," and no doubt, for the traffic staff, it was.

We may smile to-day at some of these old ordinances and habits, but traffic then was not as congested as it is on an August day now, when thousands of tourists are being carried in heavily ladened trains to the coast of Cardigan Bay. The rolling stock at that time was as light as the signals were haphazard. We have read of references, in these early days, to "powerful" engines; but they were mere pigmies to the modern locomotive, and some of those pioneer machines which were the pride of the dale sixty years ago have been relegated long since to the humble duty of the shunting yard, or rebuilt altogether.

[Picture: An Early Cambrian Tank Engine. Original Form (top), As Re-built (bottom)]

An old engineman, writing some little time since in the "Cambrian News,"

gives an interesting retrospect of the "comforts" of railway travel on the Cambrian in those early days. "The original pa.s.senger rolling stock on service on the line when opened," he says, "was of a small four-wheeled type, similar in construction to the coaches on other company's lines; about 25 feet long over all, 13 feet wheel base, or half the length and a third the weight of the bogie stock of the present day.

The coaches were built by contract, the work being divided between two well-known firms of builders,--the Ashbury Co., Manchester, and the Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Company, Birmingham. The Ashbury stock was slightly larger with more head room than the Metropolitan. The coaches were built of the very best material, the lower part of body being painted a dark brown, the upper part, from the door handles to roof, a cream colour. {114} Each coach weighed about 8 tons. The 'third cla.s.s' coaches were made up of five compartments or semi-compartments.

Cross seats, back to back sittings for five aside--accommodation for fifty pa.s.sengers--bare boards for the seats, straight up backs, open from end to end. Our forefathers evidently believed, when constructing rolling stock, in fresh air in abundance instead of the closed up compartment of late years. The thirds were lighted at dusk with two gla.s.s globe oil lamps fixed in the roof, one at each end of the coach.

Firsts and seconds were provided with a lamp for each compartment. The only other difference between the seconds and thirds was that the seats of the seconds were partly covered with black oilcloth. The latter carriage proved unremunerative, the public hardly ever patronising seconds. Therefore they were abolished. In addition to the ordinary screw coupling, coaches in those days were provided with side chains as security in case of breaking loose on the journey. Side chains, however, were abolished on the advent of the continuous brake. The buffers were provided with wooden block facings with a view of silencing and to prevent friction when travelling round curves--not at all a bad idea either. Wheels in those days were constructed entirely of iron with straight axles and spokes, not wooden blocked as at present to deaden noise. Owing to the lightness of the stock, when travelling at a fair rate of speed, oscillation occurred and pa.s.sengers had to sit firm and fast, which everyone in those days seemed to enjoy."

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 pa.s.senger on a certain train, always had to be a.s.sisted both in and out--the stationmaster pulling and the guard pus.h.i.+ng, 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 fas.h.i.+on even in those distant days. By a melancholy coincidence, the first serious mishap occurred close to Abermule, a name since a.s.sociated 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 "h.e.l.l-fire Jack," and fireman were killed. An inquest was held before Dr. Slyman, coroner, one of the most enthusiastic promoters of the Montgomerys.h.i.+re 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 ab.u.t.ting 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 pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.sengers, 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 astonis.h.i.+ng that it has been the scene of more than one awkward circ.u.mstance. 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.senger 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 a.s.sembly 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 compa.s.s 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 Lancas.h.i.+re, 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 circ.u.mstances were the more pathetic by reason of the fact that most of the pa.s.sengers 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 Lancas.h.i.+re and Yorks.h.i.+re 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 endors.e.m.e.nt to create no small sensation amongst country folk.