Financially, however, the directors still swam in troubled waters. Creditors became impatient and began to press their claims. More than one suit was brought against the Company involving long and expensive proceedings in the Court of Chancery, and very early in 1868 it was found necessary to convene, at Oswestry, a meeting of the “mortgagees, holders of certificates of indebtedness and other creditors, and of the preference and ordinary proprietors for the consideration of the best means of dealing with the conflicting and other claims and interests of the company’s creditors and proprietors and of passing such resolutions in regard thereto, or any of them, as might at such meeting be deemed expedient.” To obtain some means of getting out of the financial morass in which the undertaking was floundering was “expedient” indeed, and it is hardly surprising to find that, in view of the many conflicts of interest, the assembly is recorded to have been both “large and influential.” Mr. Bancroft presided in the absence of Earl Vane, chairman of the Company, and he was supported by the directors and
officials who had done much to bring the Cambrian into existence and were now struggling to put it on its feet. The scheme which was laid before the meeting was long and complicated. More than one meeting was required to thrash matters out, but in the end a readjustment was arrived at, and a new scheme was adopted for constituting the board. From July 1st, 1868, until December 31st, 1878, it consisted of ten directors, four of whom were elected by the Coast Section and four by the Inland Section, the other two seats being in the nomination of Earl Vane and the Earl of Powis. The revenue from the whole undertakings went into a common fund, and, after deducting working expenses, the surplus was divided between the Coast and Inland Sections in certain proportions, to be determined by arbitrators and an umpire. Admirable as this arrangement might be in theory, in practice we know what generally happens when
“United, yet divided, twain at once
Sit two Kings of Brentford on one throne,”
and it is hardly astonishing that this form of dual authority should have led to a good deal of squabbling between the rival “monarchs.” It proved, indeed, a cumbrous contrivance, and, when the period for its operation terminated, with the close of 1878, the constitution of the board was allowed to revert to the limits laid down under the Act of 1864, without any provision for sectional directors at all. During these intervening years, indeed, questions of finance and of the upkeep of the lines were still for ever cropping up, and not always as readily disposed of. It is a long and dreary story of the inevitable struggles with ways and means which so often marks the life of pioneer undertakings. For years these Chancery suits hung like chains about the company’s
neck, and even into the eighties the directors were never free from sudden embarrassments and never knew from what quarter they might proceed.
One such difficulty, indeed, ultimately proved a blessing in disguise. In 1884, at the instance of the Company’s bankers, the line was placed in the hands of a Receiver, Mr. John Conacher, fortunately, being chosen for this office. The line was ripe for a great and final effort to place the undertaking on a firmer footing, and, together with the late Mr. A. C. Humphreys-Owen, Mr. Conacher drew up a scheme of arrangement between the Company and its creditors under which about seventy different stocks were consolidated into ten; and it was their patient and skilful work in thus formulating what became known as the scheme of 1885, that laid the foundation of the Company’s improved financial position of which the proprietors and the public have reaped the benefit in subsequent years.
Meantime, however, other matters not directly bearing on finance, engaged the attention of the directors. Amongst these was the question of the works, which it was found necessary to erect, since the Company was working its own line. In July 1864, the inhabitants of Welshpool, conscious of the prominent part which the town had played in the inauguration of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, presented a memorial to the board in which they urged its central position on the system and the recent completion of the waterworks as strong arguments for favourable consideration of the borough’s claims to such an advantage. Nor was it without an eye to future development that Welshpool station was built in a manner capable of allowing its upper stories to be used as the Company’s offices. Here, for the brief space, the offices were, but in both these cases ambitious Poolonians were doomed to disappointment.
The official headquarters of the Newtown and Machynlleth Railway Company were destined for some time to remain at Machynlleth, where Mr. David Howell, its secretary, practised as a solicitor; but in January 1862 the staff of the Oswestry and Newtown had removed from Welshpool, and, together with those of the Llanidloes and Newtown, the Oswestry, Ellesmere and Whitchurch, the Buckley and the Wrexham Mold and Connah’s Quay, jointly occupied two rooms on the second floor of No. 9a, Cannon Row, Westminster, Mr. George Lewis being secretary of all five companies. On the floor below the Aberystwyth and Welsh Coast Company cohabited with some dozen slate and stone companies, while Mr. Benjamin Piercy sat in state hard by in Great George Street, and Mr. Thomas Savin weaved his ambitious schemes around the corner, at No. 7, Delahay Street, with Mr. James Fraser (father of the auditor of the Cambrian in recent years) acting, under power of attorney, as his manager. This proved quite a convenient arrangement so long as Parliamentary Committee work absorbed much of the time of these officials, and here all the companies held their board meetings, generally on the same day.
There were stirring times without, and it is scarcely strange if Cannon Row did not live up to the reputation of its suggestive name. Rows, indeed, were frequent and occasionally threatened to reverberate beyond the walls of the official sanctum. There is an old and honoured Cambrian official, then a young clerk sitting at his desk in the office above the board room, who remembers the occasion when an extraordinary scene was enacted on that dusty little stage. From a scuffle of some sort in the board room Mr. Gartside, a Director of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway Company, beat a hasty retreat up the stairs to the clerk’s room, closely