Tradesmen, Shareholders, etc.
Drum and Fife Band.
Navvies, etc.
“At the Town Hall the Corporation had most hospitably provided for their refreshment. Punch and wine of the choicest and best descriptions were abundantly supplied, under the management of Mr. Atkins, and Mrs. Edwards, of the Queen’s Head Hotel, Oswestry. The company present included the Oswestry Corporation, the Welshpool Corporation, the directors of the railway, the Second Montgomeryshire Volunteers, and the Oswestry Volunteers.”
The special train then returned to Welshpool, where Mrs. Owen of Glansevern declared the line opened. Then the inevitable procession, and the not less inevitable “cold collation” and speech making, and dancing. Only one untoward incident marked the day. Owing to the crush to board the returning train from Oswestry, the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry and Montgomeryshire Militia bands got left behind, and the Oswestry Rifle Corps musicians, who had been more successful in the scramble, had to do all the blowing for their stranded comrades. But, it is recorded, they blew with triple vigour, as well they might!
Oswestry was now, at long last, connected with Montgomeryshire, but there were those who felt in no mood for rejoicing in that event. Among the residents of the Severn Valley were those who, like the redoubtable Mr. Weller “considered that the rail is unconstitootional and an inwader o’ privileges.” They solemnly shook their heads and deplored the doom of the mail-coach. What, they asked, was to become of Tustin? Tustin had driven the mail coach from Shrewsbury every morning, summer and winter, starting from the Post Office at 4 a.m., and covering the score of miles to Welshpool in about two hours. To see him and his fine horses arrive at the Royal Oak was a source of daily pride to Welshpolonians. “In the summer mornings,” says a writer in the “Licensing Victualler’s Gazette” in 1878, looking back upon those days, “there was always a number of people up to see the mail arrive, and the cordial and cheery welcome given to those passengers who alighted to partake of breakfast at the hotel, by the buxom and genial landlady, Mrs. Whitehall, was a thing to be remembered and talked about. She was the pink of what such a woman should be, and the fame of her cuisine reached very far beyond the county in which she lived.” Later in the morning, the thirteen miles between Welshpool and Newtown were done in little more than an hour. But “the days of coaching were drawing to a close even in Wales; the iron horse was slowly to elbow one coach and then another off the road, putting them back as it were, nearer and nearer to the coast; until even Tustin and his famous Aberystwyth mail had to succumb. But they made a gallant fight of it, and died what we may call gamely.” In recent years the coach, or its modern counterpart, the charabanc and motor bus, have come into something of their own again, and are providing, in turn, a new form of competition with the railways.
In 1860, long distance highway traffic did seem doomed, for the “iron horse” could cover the ground in what then appeared a prodigious pace. Six trains ran each way between Oswestry and Welshpool on week-days and two each way on Sundays, while excursion fares advertised in connection with a Sunday School trip from Oswestry to Welshpool held out the alluring advantage of “covered carriages, 1s.; first-class, 2s.” for the double journey—a figure to make the mouth of the present day passenger water! It was hardly so necessary then, as it has proved to be on recent occasions, to the writer’s personal knowledge, for groups of mourners travelling to a funeral to contrive to save a few pence by taking “pleasure party” tickets!
But, as yet, no “pleasure” or any other party could proceed by rail beyond Welshpool. Work on the remaining link, had begun; but at the Newtown end, where arrangements had been entered into for a working alliance with the Newtown and Llanidloes Railway. At the Welshpool end circumstances were not so propitious. The original surveys had been made by way of Berriew, but this necessitated carrying the line through part of the Glansevern domain, and, as the late Earl of Powis had jocularly remarked, in connection with the planning of a neighbouring line, the beau ideal of a railway is one that comes about a mile from one’s own house and passes through a neighbour’s land.
So it was to the other side of the valley that Mr. Piercy had, at length, to carry his measuring instruments, and, crossing the Severn at Kilkewydd, climb the long incline to Forden. Before this was finally accomplished the dissolution of partnership between the contractors had taken place, and while Mr. Davies transferred his attention to some adjacent