and as Newtown was approached the travellers found themselves passing under triumphal arches, to the clang of church bells and the blare of bands. On the leading engine rode the young Marquis of Blandford playing “See the Conquering Here Comes” on the cornet-a-piston, Mr. George Owen, Mr. Davies and Mr. Webb. Earl Vane was in the train and received a public welcome at the station. Then the inevitable speeches. The return train was still longer and took two hours to reach Machynlleth, where the jubilations were renewed, and Countess Vane, to whom Mr. Davies presented a silver spade in honour of the previous ceremony of sod cutting, declared the line open. More speeches, luncheon, toasts and processioning ab lib and “so home.”
The time, however, had come for a memorable parting. From the consummation of this project Mr. David Davies’s connection with the Cambrian, as one of its contractors, was to cease. He had saved it from early death, and guided the infant through its difficult teething time, while at the same time he was employed in building other railways, which, later, were to become closely linked with its fuller life. Among these was the Mid-Wales, to become amalgamated with the Cambrian in 1904, the Brecon and Merthyr, over four miles of whose metals, from Talyllyn Junction to Brecon, Cambrian trains were from that date to run, and the Manchester and Milford, which formed a junction with the Cambrian at Aberystwyth. But so far as the Cambrian itself is concerned Mr. Davies’s future association was to be that of a director, an office, in its turn, dramatically terminated amidst fresh thunder clouds which had not yet appeared above the horizon.
II.
Mr. Savin, as we have seen, had, during these later stages of progress with the making of the line from Newtown, been busily engaged still nearer the coast. A company with an ambitious name and a not less ambitious aim had been formed to build a railway from Aberystwyth to Machynlleth and along the shores of Merionethshire to Portmadoc, the port of shipment of the Festiniog slate traffic, and eventually to continue, through Pwllheli to that wonderful prospective harbour, upon which the eyes of railway promoters had already been turned without avail, Porthdynlleyn, near Nevin. [63] Its close connection with the other local undertakings is shown by the agreement under which the Oswestry and Newtown was to subscribe £75,000, and the Newtown and Llanidloes £25,000 by the creation of 5 per cent. preference stock, a sum ultimately increased in the case of the former Company by another £100,000.
Borne on the wings of Mr. Whalley’s eloquence, Aberystwyth, assembled in public meeting, led by the Mayor, Mr. Robert Edwards, gave its enthusiastic support to the scheme. This was followed by another meeting, at which Mr. Piercy, as engineer, outlined the plan and bade the inhabitants look forward to the day when the railway was to enable them to compete with successful rivals on the North Wales Coast, and once more justify for them
the proud name of “the Brighton of Wales.” Other railway companies were inclined to be obstructive, but their opposition was not altogether formidable, and when Mr. Abraham Howell appeared in the role of mediator between conflicting interests, the way was soon prepared for proceeding apace with the scheme. So harmonious, indeed, had the atmosphere become that within less than two months of this meeting the Company’s Bill had received Royal Assent, almost a record, surely, in those days of interminable controversy! Mr. Savin’s project was to begin by carrying the line, whence it linked up with the Newtown and Machynlleth at the latter place, as far as Ynyslas. Here, at the nearest point on the seaboard, the mists which hang over the great bogs that stretch from the sand-dunes up to the foothills of Plynlimmon, took fantastic shape in the eye of the ambitious contractor. He may, perchance, have heard the story told of a man who owned a barren piece of land bordering the seashore. A friend advised him to convert it to some use. The owner replied that it would not grow grass, or produce corn, was unfit for fruit trees, and could not even be converted into an ornamental lake as the soil was too sandy to retain the water. “Then,” said the friend, “why not make it a first-class watering place?” This, at any rate, was the project on which Mr. Savin set his heart. But not even first-class watering places can be built in a day, and the contractor made a modest beginning with a row of lodging houses. Alas! not for the last time, the parable of the man who built upon the sands was to have its application to these Welsh coast undertakings. The houses were no sooner finished than they began to sink, and some time later they were pulled down and the material put to more hopeful and profitable use.
Ynyslas remains to-day a lonely swamp, but somewhat better luck attended the effort to carry the excursionist on to Borth. The line was pushed on there, and an old farm house, on the outskirts of what was then nothing but a tiny fishing village, was converted into a station. The following July the line was open for traffic. Curiously enough, little public interest seems to have been aroused in Borth itself by the event. The inhabitants of the village were mainly engaged in seafaring, and the arrival of the steam engine, in the opinion of some, boded no good. As for English visitors—what use were they? The story, indeed, is told that some four enterprising tourists, who had arrived ahead of the railway, sought accommodation in vain in the village, and had perforce to make the best of it in a contractor’s railway wagon that stood on a siding of the unfinished line. They cuddled up under a tarpaulin sheet and settled down for the night, when someone gave the wagon a shove and starting down an incline on the unballasted track it proceeded merrily on its way to Ynyslas. Not so merry the affrighted and unwilling passengers, who, when day broke, discovered themselves marooned in a remote spot miles from anywhere productive of breakfast bacon and eggs!
But, if Borth itself looked on askance, Aberystwyth was ready enough to acclaim the approach of the railway. The resort on the Rheidol had already begun to attract visitors who completed the journey from Llanidloes or Machynlleth by coach, and now there was the prospect, in the early future, of the railway running into the town itself. So, very early on the day when the first train was to steam into and out of Borth, vehicles of all sorts crowded the road from Aberystwyth, the narrow street of Borth was rapidly thronged with an excited multitude who flowed over on the sands.
At 8-30 a.m. the train left, with 100 excursionists. It was followed by another at 1 p.m., for which 530 took tickets. There was a great scramble for seats, and every one of the thirty coaches of which the train was composed, was packed to the doors. Those who failed to obtain a footing formed an avenue a mile long through which the train moved out amidst tumultuous applause. In the carriages the passengers shouted, talked, ate, drank and—sang hymns! The twelve miles to Machynlleth took about twenty-five minutes to accomplish, and, arrived there, the excursionists enjoyed themselves immensely, “as,” says a contemporary recorder, “Aberystwyth people generally manage to do when from home at any rate.”