Nor were the good folks of Aberystwyth peculiar in their joy. A Shropshire newspaper published a leading article of a column and a half descriptive of “six hours by the seaside for half-a-crown,”—the return excursion fare from Shrewsbury and Oswestry, while Poolonians could travel for a florin. The result was a mighty rush of trippers, not the less attracted, possibly, by the additional announcement that the railway company had thoughtfully opened a refreshment room at Borth station! So great, indeed, was the press of traffic, that the company’s servants sometimes had considerable difficulty in coping with it. One day all the tickets were exhausted, but the stationmaster at Carno, one Burke, an Irishman, not to be beaten, booked some thirty or forty farm labourers with “cattle tickets.” The manager passed next day and remonstrated. “Why, Burke,” said he, “the men won’t like your making beasts of them!” “Och, yure honour,” returned the stationmaster, “many of them made bastes of themselves before they returned.”
Indeed, the scenes at Borth on the arrival of these excursions were occasionally almost indescribable. One scribe invokes
the loan of the pencil of Hogarth adequately to portray it. “From a cover of stones close by springs an urchin lithe and swift; another and another, ten, twelve or more, ‘naked as unto earth they came,’ and away in single file across the beach into the sea. The vans move ponderously on, pushed by mermen and mermaids, and out spring any quantity of live Hercules. Very curious must be the sight, if one might judge by the crowds of ladies—well women at any rate—and gentlemen around every group of bathers. Boats are in great request and the ladies cling very lovingly to the boatmen who, in return, hug them tightly as they embark or disembark their fair freight. The very porpoises, gambling out there, seem to enjoy the whole thing heartily and shake their fat sides at the fun. Our friend with the hammer discourses learnedly about those long ridges of hard rock which stand out over the Dovey Plain when, gracious me! we look round and, will you believe it? There was a bevy of females in a state of—shall I go on? No; but I will just say we saw them waddling like ducks into the water. The porpoises were alarmed and betook themselves off. And so did we. Had the bathers been black instead of white we should have thought ourselves on the coast of Africa. Such an Adam and Eve-ish state of things we never saw before. Well, honi soit qui mal y pense.”
Anyhow, thus did the six hours swiftly pass in those unregenerate days. For Mr. Savin had yet to build his Borth hotel and lodging houses, which to-day give welcome shelter to a very different throng of visitors, summer after summer, attracted by the placid beauties and the invigorating air of Cardigan Bay. It was, at worst, but a temporary orgy, marking, as it were, a new epoch in the life of the Cambrian; whose lengthening limbs now stretched from the Severn to the sea.
CHAPTER VI. THE BATTLE OF ELLESMERE.
“The question of a railway is now or never.”—The Late Mr. R. G. Jebb, of Ellesmere.
No period, since the wild days of the “railway mania,” was more pregnant of schemes than the later months of 1860. They sprang up like mushrooms all along the Shropshire border, and some of them, like mushrooms, as suddenly suffered decay. A facetious Salopian prophet ventured publicly to predict that “we shall hear next of a railway to Llansilin (a remote village among the border hills) or the moon.” His ratiocination was hardly exaggerated. A “preliminary prospectus” was actually published for carrying a railway, at a cost of under £10,000 per mile, from Shrewsbury, through Kinnerley and Porthywaen, thence “near Llanfyllin and Llanrhaiadr,” to Llangynog, “through the Berwyn hills” to Llandrillo, and so to Dolgelley and Portmadoc. It was to be worked and maintained by the West Midland, Shrewsbury and Coast of Wales Railway Co.; the prospects of mineral and passenger traffic were “most promising,” and throughout its entire length of 90 miles, the promoters pointed out with all the emphasis which italics can afford, “it has only one tunnel, and that slightly exceeding a mile and half in length.” Eventually, a line, partly following this
route, under the less comprehensive title of the West Shropshire Mineral Railway, and later known as “the Potteries,” constructed from a station in Abbey Forgate, Shrewsbury, to Llanymynech, and on to Nantmawr, with a branch from Kinnerley to Criggion, ran for a time, then fell into abeyance and disrepair, and was in recent years re-opened under the Light Railways Act as the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Railway, an independent company.
But, in its original form, the undertaking was apparently to be no friendly competitor with the existing Oswestry and Newtown and associated lines, whose ambition it had, for some time, been to extend its northern terminus, resting on the Great Western branch at Oswestry, through Ellesmere to Whitchurch, there to form a more serviceable junction with the London and North Western from Shrewsbury to Crewe, and the busy hives of Lancashire. But more formidable opposition was already afoot elsewhere. The Great Western, none too eager, as we have seen, to assist independent undertakings in Montgomeryshire, were ready enough to capture traffic in other quarters, and their answer to the Oswestry and Whitchurch project was to formulate a scheme for a branch from Rednal to Ellesmere, with incidental hints about constructing a loop to place Oswestry on their main line. Draughtsmen were busy everywhere with pens and plans. Public halls echoed to the optimistic eloquence of promoters and counter promoters, and powder and shot was being hurriedly got together for the tremendous fusilade in the Parliamentary committee rooms, where, for many a long day, there was to rage and sway the battle for the rights and privileges of bringing the steam engine into the little town of Ellesmere.
For, though wider schemes were involved in the struggle, Ellesmere was the pivot on which arguments and contentions centred. In such a conflict, needless to say, all the old rivalries of “leviathan” interests, of which we have already heard so much, re-emerged. What was still called the “Montgomeryshire party”—the men who had brought the other local railways into existence in spite of well-nigh overwhelming difficulties—continued to look for association with the North Western for greater salvation. Others favoured the chance of obtaining increased facilities for through traffic from the Great Western. Between the two warring elements, Ellesmere itself, as one of its most estimable and influential citizens had put it, believed it was “now or never” for them. In the Parliamentary Committee Rooms, where the evidence occupied thirteen days, and counsels’ speeches several more, the two projects were stubbornly fought out. Great Western witnesses came forward to aver that, owing to the haste with which the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway had been projected, Oswestry had been left too much in the lurch, and the time was now come for reconsideration of its claims to be brought on to the main line. Mr. Sergeant Wheeler, with all the command of forensic eloquence, drew visions of the Shropshire market town as “a great central place of meeting for the people all round.” All that was necessary was to build a line from Oswestry to Rednal, and then the projected branch from Rednal to Ellesmere, and Rednal itself might become a second Rugby or Crewe; who could tell? As to the continuation of such a line from Ellesmere to Whitchurch, true, Paddington was not enthusiastic, but when they found that that was the price demanded for any measure of local support, they were ready to pay it.