to prove their preamble, and another signal was given for local rejoicings over the result. Not only at Oswestry and Ellesmere and other places along the route of the new line, but as far afield as Montgomery and Llanfyllin, where a branch line of their own was being promoted to Llanymynech, hats were thrown into the air and healths were drunk to the victory for local enterprise. Oswestry parish church bells rang for two days, and the Rifle Corps band blew itself dry outside the houses of Mr. Savin, Mr. George Owen and others. Mr. Savin himself, returning from London, during these proceedings, met “with a reception at Oswestry such as no man ever received before.” Carried shoulder high through the streets of the town, accompanied by a surging throng of cheering admirers, armed with torches, to the tune of “See the Conquering Hero comes,” he was addressed in congratulatory vein by several of his fellow-citizens, and it was only when a first and second attempt to fly from the embarrassment of so tumultuous a welcome had failed, that he succeeded, on a third, in making his escape. The “small haberdasher,” who had been deemed incapable of organising railway schemes, had indeed become something very like a railway king!
But we are anticipating events. At the end of August, 1861, the first sod had been cut at Ellesmere, where it was proposed to begin the construction, proceeding first in the direction of Whitchurch. The ceremony was performed by Sir John Hanmer and Mr. John Stanton, in a field belonging to Mr. W. A. Provis, “not far from the workhouse,” and a spade and barrow, suitably inscribed, was presented to Sir John by Messrs. Savin and Ward, the contractors. There was the usual ceremonial, inclusive of banqueting and speech-making, and banners, emblazoned with such appropriate mottoes as “Whalley for ever,” “Hurrah for Sir John Hanmer and
John Stanton, Esquire,” floated in the breeze. One ingenious gentleman, elaborating the topical theme, had erected a flag which, we are told, “attracted special attention from its significance and quaintness,” representing a donkey cart with two passengers on one side and a steam engine and carriages on the other, to personify “Ellesmere of yesterday,” and “Ellesmere of to-day,” with the philosophic addendum, “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” “Aye, says the preacher, every valley shall be raised and every hill shall be brought low.” “Aye, says the teacher, let us bless the bridge that carries us safely over,” “Aye, aye, quoth honest nature.” The application to evil communications might, in such a connection, be a little ambiguous, but presumably nobody imagined it to refer to the Oswestry, Ellesmere and Whitchurch Railway!
The allusion to bridges was rather more germane; for, in building the line towards Whitchurch, which was the first section taken in hand, the engineers were faced with a bridging problem of a peculiar nature, and only less in magnitude than that which had confronted the constructors of the famous Liverpool and Manchester Railway thirty years earlier. Partly in order to avoid interfering with Sir John Hanmer’s property, and partly because they deemed it the better way, the engineers decided to carry the line over Whixall Moss, a wide area of bog land lying between Bettisfield and Fenns Bank. This, it was supposed, might even be drained by making the railway across its quivering surface, but hopes of this sort were not to be realised, for it remains to-day a wild, but picturesque stretch of heather and silver birches, where the peat-digger plies his trade with, perhaps, as much profit as the farmer would in tilling it. But as to its power to bear the weight of passing trains the engineers had little doubt.
The canal already crossed it, and though in making soundings the surveyors once lost their 35 foot rod in the morass, this, was near the canal bank, and it did not deter them in their efforts to discover a means of securing the railway from similar disaster. The average depth of the moss was found to be twelve feet, but there were areas where it was only nine feet deep, and at most 17 feet, and when the bottom was reached it was discovered to be sand.
So, proceeding merrily, Mr. George Owen first drained the site of the line by means of deep side and lateral drains filled with brushwood and grig. He then laid strong faggots three feet thick and from eight to twelve feet long, and over these placed a framework of larch poles extending the entire width of the rails. The poles were then interlaced with branches of hazel and brushwood and upon this the sleepers and rails were laid, the whole being ballasted with sand and other light material. And, in the end it proved a triumph for courage and ingenuity. Though there might be some slight oscillation, heavy trains have been running over this interesting two or three mile stretch for many a long year without the slightest mishap.
Not to be outdone by little Ellesmere, another “first sod” was turned at Oswestry on September 4th, 1862, by Miss Kinchant of Park Hall, and Miss Lloyd, daughter of the Mayor of the borough, on the Shelf Bank field, hard by the existing terminus of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, with which the new line was to be connected. The streets were in gala dress, and while the leading citizens fared sumptuously on the Wynnstay Arms bowling green, and disported themselves at a “rural fête,” tea was served to “the poorer women of the town and neighbourhood.” In addition to the residents many came from Ellesmere in wagons drawn by a decorated
traction engine,—significant emblem of the new power which was shortly to bring the two neighbouring and ever friendly places within a quarter of an hour’s distance of each other.
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.