Work now went ahead on both sections of the line, under the personal supervision of Messrs. Thomas and John Savin and Mr. John Ward, and by the spring of 1863 the railway was ready for traffic over the eleven miles between Ellesmere and Whitchurch.  The honour of being the first passengers to make the journey belongs, appropriately enough, to the late Capt. Jebb and his company of Rifles, who, by courtesy of the contractors, were driven to Whitchurch on April 20th, a few other friends accompanying them.  The official trial trip was made shortly after, in a train drawn by “two heavy engines,” the “Montgomery” and the “Hero,” and in crossing Whixall Moss, we are told, “the deflection was almost inappreciable.”  Captain Tyler was now able to pass the line as entirely satisfactory, and, early in the morning on the first Monday in May, a little group of Ellesmerians assembled at their new station to witness the first regular train leave for Whitchurch.  No doubt their hearts swelled with pride, but beyond the usual exhibition of such emotion as so notable an event inspired, there was no public acclaim.

Another twelve months were to elapse before the remaining section, from Ellesmere to Oswestry, was ready for traffic.  In July 1864, however, this link was forged, and the event synchronizing with the completion of the work at the other end of the chain, from Borth to Aberystwyth, it threw open the whole length of what was about to become, under the Consolidation Act, the main line of the Cambrian Railways.

“When they saw the Crimean Campaign they seemed about to be engaged in against the sea, he thought it had been very much to the advantage of the Welsh Coast line, if, on the formation of the Board the Directors had been put through a series of questions in early English history, and if their engineer had been directed to report to them on the maritime events of the reign of Canute.”—Edward, Third Earl of Powis.

Adopting the wise Tennysonian counsel, the promoters eventually decided to “take the bend,” and Parliamentary power was sought for this deviation of the original scheme.  It was opposed by the Great Western Railway as inimical to their project of carrying a line from Bala to Barmouth and so forming a connection with the Welsh Coast, and their antagonism was only disposed of after a compromise had been made in the Parliamentary Committee Room, by which the great company obtained power to build the bridge themselves, if they wished, within ten years, and the tolls on the deviation were to be charged only for the same distance as if the traffic had been carried by the bridge.  So the line was carried round to cross the Dovey at a narrow point near Glandyfi and connect the coast line with the other railway there.

But this connection only came later, in August 1867, when the six miles of line from Aberdovey to the Junction was carried along the estuary shore and through the four tunnels which, until the Mid-Wales Railway was absorbed in 1904, remained the only ones on the whole system.  For a considerable time after the coast line was opened passengers were carried from Aberdovey by ferry to Ynyslas.  At high tide the boat could make for the station, but when the water was low it berthed on the Cardiganshire side, at a lower landing place, whence travellers and baggage proceeded by a little branch into Ynyslas station.

The first sod on the Merionethshire side had been cut, in April 1862, by Mrs. Foulkes of Aberdovey, on the Green near the Corbett Arms Hotel at Towyn, without formal ceremony, but in the presence of Mr. Piercy and Mr. Savin, and “a few scores of persons who cheered lustily.”  We may hope that even this mild demonstration did something to hearten the promoters in their herculean task.  For several miles along the shore the line had to be protected against the assault of the high tides that periodically sweep Cardigan Bay, and it was soon only too evident that ordinary ramparts were no sure buttress against Atlantic rollers.  More than once the permanent way was washed by the waves and engineer and contractor, viewing the dismal wreckage, must have felt that noble references to the moral of Canute, however pungent, were not altogether inapropos.

But engineer and contractor had something better to do than admire the view.  Below them and beyond, even when Barmouth Junction was reached in July, 1865, there lay another obstacle which could not be avoided by any but the widest detour.  Trains could, and were eventually carried around the narrow neck of the Dovey; they must cross the estuary of the Mawddach almost at its widest point in order to gain the Barmouth shore.  Meanwhile, the line was carried along the southern bank of the river, by what is now the Dolgelley branch, to Penmaenpool, and the public had to remain content with such facilities as this localised service could provide.

Besides, there was something more important to bother about.  Actions in Chancery had begun to distract the attention of worried directors, and these retarded progress with the construction of the line.  So it was not until June 1869 that the Cambrian continued beyond Penmaenpool, and, even when Dolgelley was eventually approached, passengers had to alight at a platform some little distance from the town.  Only when the Great Western Railway from Ruabon was completed did the trains from Barmouth Junction run into Dolgelley station proper.

It was a lengthy as well as a cumbersome operation, and when, in 1899, the ironwork portion of the viaduct had become too weak for the constantly increasing loads of developing traffic, it was completely renewed with a modern steel structure of four spans, one of which was a spring span, revolving on the centre pier and giving two clear openings.  The piers carrying the girders are formed of columns 8ft. in diameter sunk through the sand down to solid rock, which was reached at a depth of about 90 feet below high water mark.  The columns are steel cylinders filled with concrete, and were sunk into position by means of compressed air on the diving bell principle, and owing to the depth below water at high tide, the men excavating inside were finally working under a pressure of three atmospheres, or 45 lbs. to the square inch.  The contractors were the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Co. Ltd., of Darlington.  In 1906, and the following two or three years, the timber portion of the viaduct was also completely renewed in the same material, the contractor in this case being Mr. Abraham Williams of Aberdovey, who had built, or helped to build, many of the old wooden bridges on the coast line.  The total cost of the renewals was approximately £60,000, and it is no small achievement that they were carried out without a moment’s stoppage in the traffic.

But there were other difficulties to be faced—difficulties not so easily overcome as even mountain torrents and sandy estuaries.  The hand of the law was heavy upon the constructors, and even when the line was practically ready for opening, so long a delay took place in settling outstanding claims that the track became almost derelict.  For these were anxious days for railway promoters.  The rosy promise of rich revenues from remote Welsh lines failed to mature, and Mr. Savin, heavily weighted with the immensity of his undertakings, and crushed by the costly construction of his great hotels, sank under the burden.  He faced his financial embarrassments with characteristic pluck, but it was a dark hour in the annals of British finance far beyond the boundaries of the Principality, amidst which came the sensational failure of the Overend and Gurney Bank, and, so far as the Welsh Coast Railway in particular was concerned, the interminable legal wrangles not only cost money, but postponed the hour at which the line could earn its keep.

Even under these adverse circumstances trains did occasionally run, carrying pigs from Pwllheli, or a small load of coal or timber for some outlying farmer or builder, or a passenger or two willing to take the risk of an adventurous journey liable at any moment to be brought to a sudden termination by the barriers of the bailiffs.  But even bailiffs are human; and at night, when they slept, or were turned away by subtle hospitality at some neighbouring hostelry, journeys could be made, dashing down from Portmadoc to Barmouth and back with all the exhilaration of a secret expedition.

On another occasion an official of the line visiting one station master on this section was startled, in reply to his cheery inquiry as to whether all was well with him, to learn that “the only drawback was that he had the devil in his parlour.”  On his exclamation of incredulous alarm, the stationmaster said that he would show the official, if he would come and see.  Entering the station house with some trepidation, he beheld in the middle of the parlour one of the iron fire-brackets, used to prevent water troughs from freezing in cold weather, popularly known among railway men as “devils.”  It seems that the builders had neglected to put in a grate, and the poor man had had to fall back on this diabolical method of keeping himself warm!  The matter, no doubt, was quickly righted, for stationmasters, even then, were important functionaries, often wearing tall silk hats, though some of them were regarded as passing rich on 15/- or 16/- a week.

There had, as we have seen, already been plans for carrying a line right up the Vyrnwy or the Tanat Valley, through the Berwyns to the vale of the Dee—the wonderful West Midland line which was to run from Shrewsbury to the shores of Cardigan Bay, over hill and down dale with “only one tunnel.”  But the route left Llanfyllin eight miles to the south, and Llanfyllin, as the largest town among these upland valleys, was not disposed to take that lying down.  The Oswestry and Newtown line crossed the end of the vale, at Llanymynech, only nine miles away, and that was clearly the route by which the engineers could most easily construct a connective link.  In the autumn of 1860, one of Llanfyllin’s most prominent citizens, Mr. J. Pugh, had posted over to Oswestry, where he had an interview with Mr. Whalley.  “Can you help us to get a railway?” Yes, anything in his power, the hon. Member for Peterboro’ would do, and he was as good as his word.  Within a month a crowded audience pressed into the Llanfyllin Town Hall to listen to the scheme which Mr. Whalley and his colleagues had to lay before them.  The chair was taken by Mr. R. M. Bonner Maurice, of Bodynfoel, who had, it was happily recalled, presided at one of the meetings eight years earlier at Newtown out of which the germ of the Montgomeryshire Railways sprang.  This was, indeed, good augury, and when, not only Mr. Whalley and Mr. Johns, with their enthusiasm, but Mr. George Owen, with his plans in his pocket, came before them to show how the thing could be done, at a cost of some £60,000, enthusiasm rose high.

The promoters had cautiously qualified their promises as to the length of the branch by proposing to have its terminus at Llanfyllin for “the present.”  Some years later, when the Liverpool City Council, seeking fresh water supplies for their growing community, found a rich source in the valley of the Vyrnwy at Llanwddyn and constructed their giant works at what is now Lake Vyrnwy, thoughts began to turn to the prospect of a continuation of the railway in that direction, but it was not a practicable proposition.  Up the Llanfyllin branch, however, there came the bulk of the stores, including the huge pipes, and the Portland cement for the bed of the lake.  The cement was landed in bags at Aberdovey and from Llanfyllin a team of ninety-five horses was employed to draw it by road to the site of the works.  Half were stabled at Llanfyllin and half at the Lake, and those in charge noted a curious fact.  The horses living at the Lake went down empty in the morning and came back loaded in the afternoon, and in a few years were all out of condition, whereas those who started in the morning with their heavy load from Llanfyllin and returned empty later in the day were always in excellent fettle.  To-day the development of the motor has solved many a transport problem where heavy loads are concerned, but Llanfyllin remains, perhaps, the most convenient approach to Lake Vyrnwy for the increasing number of visitors who go year by year to enjoy its scenic beauties and its piscatorial delights.

Amongst the leading advocates of this scheme was Mr. Russel Aitken, a well-known civil engineer of Westminster, the home of many Welsh railway projects in those days.  He got into correspondence with Lord Powis about it, pointing out that, as a beginning, the line might be made as far as Llanfair, and then the promoters might “wait and see.”  But Powis Castle was not so easily to be persuaded.  The Earl considered a railway from Welshpool below Llanfair Road to Sylvaen Hall “very objectionable” and much preferred the alternative route of branching off the Llanfyllin line at Llansantffaid, via Pont Robert.  This Mr. Aitken “could not successfully try to contest” and therefore “gave up the idea of trying for powers to construct the proposed railway,” but he still thought a line “from Bala to Welshpool would pay and that it would be a great benefit to the country through which it passes.”  How far these prognostications may have been justified experience has never given us opportunity to ascertain.  A railway through the mighty ramparts of the Berwyns is as remote an accomplishment to-day as it ever was; though, after many years, Llanfair itself was to obtain its narrow guage line, an inch less than Mr. Davies’s original design, which, under the name of the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway, with the Earl’s successor as its most enthusiastic promoter and chairman, was opened for traffic on April 4th, 1903, to be worked by the Cambrian as an important feeder to its main system.

The Kerry branch is also noteworthy for another thing, that it is the first arm of the system which diverges to the east of the main line.  So does what was originally the first portion of the trunk, the line from Moat Lane to Llanidloes, later extended by the amalgamation with the Mid-Wales Railway, to Brecon, and so also does another diminutive line, another mile further, which, though not part of the Cambrian proper, deserves notice in these pages, if only for the personality of its former manager.

“Facility of communication begets ‘community of interests,’ which is the only treaty that is not a ‘scrap of paper.’”—

The Late Lord Fisher.

Lord John Russell, it is said, used, in conversation with Queen Victoria, to date all political development from the Revolution of 1688.  If those mystic figures signalize the birthday of Whiggery, in the political world, in much the same way we may date the constitution of the Cambrian, as we know it to-day, from the year 1864.  In more than one way it was a notable period in Welsh railway annals.  The various independent links in the chain were either completed and wholly or partially in working order, or in course of construction.  Thanks to the influential efforts of the Earl of Powis, arrangements had been made with the Post Office and the London and North Western Railway Company, through Sir Richard Moon, for the conveyance of mails from Shrewsbury to Borth, the then terminus.  Through working arrangements were also in force among the various local companies, and it was obvious that the time had come to face the problems of future policy.  These were not altogether of simple solution.

It set up a joint board, limited to a minimum of six and a maximum of twelve, the first directors chosen being those who had similarly served the several independent companies, some of whom, of course, had acted on more than one of these concerns.  The following year, some previous difficulties being removed, the Welsh Coast Railway was brought into the combine, and the Cambrian then assumed the organic shape in which it remained until the further amalgamation with the Mid-Wales Railway in 1904.

“United, yet divided, twain at once
Sit two Kings of Brentford on one throne,”

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 space, the offices were, but in both these cases ambitious Poolonians were doomed to disappointment.

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 documents 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.

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 assurance 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.

“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.

“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 passing 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.”

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.