In Oswestry there was, naturally enough, a general approval of any step which would place the town on the Great Western main line, and no small point was made of the fact that it would be better to have one station than two. Moreover, Mr. R. J. Croxon. whose words were weighted with the influence of a family solicitor, private banker and town clerk, was of opinion that, apart from anything else, to carry a line, as Mr. Whalley proposed, for two miles by the side of the turnpike to Whittington would be “very dangerous to people driving along,” and the attention of the Trustees ought to be called to it. But, unfortunately for Mr. Croxon and those who shared his fears in this regard, it was the business of the local surveyor to examine the plans, and he was “engaged on the other side.” Thus even among Oswestrians was opinion divided between the rival routes, and men like Alderman Thomas Minshall and Alderman Peploe Cartwright, who had stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight for independent interests in the making of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, were now inclined to regard each others’ sympathies with some suspicion.
Further down the proposed line the weight was thrown rather more decisively in favour of the Whalley scheme. Whitchurch had petitioned against the Great Western proposals, though Captain Cust, who gave evidence for the larger company, was moved to dismiss this effort as the work of “Captain Clement Hill and lot of ragamuffins.” Attempts were even made to disparage the local undertaking by reference to Mr. Savin, who had agreed to carry out the line on similar terms of lease already adopted elsewhere, as a “haberdasher, not in a position to subscribe millions towards railway projects.” In Ellesmere the argument that the Great Western scheme would bring the agricultural area into close touch with the
North Wales coalfields was quickly answered by the counter-plea that the independent company could also build a branch from that spot to Ruabon or Wrexham, and powers to that effect “would be applied for as soon as what may be called the main line from Oswestry to Whitchurch was carried.” Even the larger landowners through whose estates the rival engineers had marched with their instruments differed in their point of approach. Sir John Kynaston, Bart., of Hardwicke, near Ellesmere, who, as someone said, “if he had been left alone, was willing, like Marcus Curtius, to sacrifice himself for the public good, was brought and instructed to give evidence about embankments,” one of which, on Mr. Whalley’s line, by the way, it was supposed (though in error) would shut out his view of the Vale of Llangollen, and “destroy the happiness of his existence for the remainder of his days.” Sir John Hanmer, Bart., M.P., on the other hand, was inclined to become rhapsodic. He looked upon a railway “as a fine work of art,” which any painter might be glad to include in his landscape—only, of course, it must not cut off a landed proprietor from his woods and his other wild grounds, as the Great Western scheme proposed to do, and against this he not only objected but petitioned.
In the end the Committee declared the preamble of the Montgomeryshire party, for their Oswestry, Ellesmere, and Whitchurch Railway to be proved, and that of the Great Western not proved, though the Chairman regretted to add that the finding was not unanimous. In the lobbies rumour had it that it was, in fact, only arrived at by the casting vote of that gentleman himself. Be that as it may, it sufficed. Once again “independent” effort, astutely engineered, had triumphed over the all-powerful interests of a great and wealthy company, and amongst those who had hoped and
feared and hoped again for the success of the Oswestry Ellesmere and Whitchurch scheme enthusiasm knew no bounds.
In Ellesmere a great and excited crowd awaited news from London at the Bridgewater Hotel. They watched for the omnibus from Gobowen, which it was expected might bear the fateful tidings. But either the omnibus failed to arrive, or, if it did, it had no intelligence to impart. Shortly afterwards, however, a special messenger came post haste along the road from Oswestry, and in a moment the news flashed through the little town. “Victory”! An attempt was made to ring the bells, but the churchwarden could not be found, and no one else had authority to pull the ropes. So that the concourse fell back on the time-honoured procession, and led by a drum and fife band, and headed by the Bailiffs, the cheering throng paraded the streets while cannon booming from the market place startled the countryside for a mile or more around. Oswestry, assembled in public meeting, put to flight its town clerk’s gloomy prognostications with hilarious speeches, and outside the more dignified civic circles popular demonstration took still more picturesque form.
The return of a number of witnesses who had gone up to London to give evidence against the local scheme and in support of the Great Western was awaited at the Oswestry station by a hostile crowd. Some delay in their arrival home was occasioned by an untoward incident even before they finally left London. Seating themselves in a first-class compartment in the rear of the train at Paddington, they waited at first patiently and then impatiently for it to start. At last, unable to understand the delay, one of them put out his head and asked a passing official when the train was going. “It has gone” was the laconic reply. The coach
which they had chosen was not attached to the rest of the train, and they were not so meticulously careful about examining tickets on the Great Western system as they are to-day. When the belated passengers did eventually reach Oswestry, the crowd was still there. What was more, they had had time to organise what was deemed a suitable reception. Among the witnesses was a gentleman who, it appeared, had at one time been very short of pence, and, it was alleged, had left his abode without paying the rent. Somehow or another this little fact had been raked up and a number of wags had cut the shape of a latch-key out of a sheet of tin. As he alighted from the train this was dangled before him at the end of a long pole, with a pendant inscription, “Who left the key under the door?”
The promoters of the new undertaking, of which Mr. George Lewis became first secretary, with offices in Oswald Chambers, Oswestry, had every reason for satisfaction. Royal assent was given to their Bill in August, 1861, authorising a capital of £150,000 in £10 shares, with £50,000 on loan, the work to be completed within five years. There were, however, still tough battles to be waged over subsequent efforts to obtain sanction for certain deviations and extensions, against which the Great Western continued to fight tooth and nail with a counter-offensive of their own. No fewer than three distinct schemes were now before the public, with all sorts of loops and junctions at Rednal or Mile End, near Whittington, and branches from Bettisfield to Wem, or to Yorton, and from Ellesmere to Ruabon. But it is an easier task to draw plans on a map than to carry them out. The Wem branch never matured, the link with Denbighshire only after many years, and then to Wrexham and not Ruabon. So far as the main issue was concerned, however, the Great Western again failed