Early in their inception, elaborate regulations were drawn up by the organisers of the original local undertakings, of which a copy, issued by the Oswestry and Newtown Company, as adopted “at a meeting of the Board of Directors, held on Saturday, the 25th February, 1860,” and preserved among the papers of the late Mr. David Howell of Machynlleth, gives some
interesting indication. It is bound in vellum, fitted with a clasp, and adorned within with a series of woodcuts, descriptive of the old-day signalman, clad in tall hat, tail coat and white trousers, explanatory of the hand signal code, with flags, which preceded the more general use of the modern signals, controlled from a signal box. Following the precept, made familiar by the nursery rhymes of our childhood, it informs us that
“RED is a signal of DANGER, and to STOP.
GREEN is a signal of CAUTION, and to GO SLOWLY.
WHITE is a Signal of ALL RIGHT, and to GO ON.
As an additional precaution, should no flag be handy, it warns drivers that “anything moved violently up and down or a man holding both hands up is a sign of danger.”
Some of these early regulations were extremely primitive. For instance, long before the scientific system of the block telegraph and the tablet were thought out, it was deemed sufficient to ordain that “On a Train or Engine stopping at or passing an intermediate station or Junction, a STOP Signal must be exhibited for FIVE minutes, after which a CAUTION Signal must be exhibited for FIVE minutes more.” After that, apparently, any train might proceed—and take its risk of the one in front having reached the next signalling point! At level crossings at any distance from the signalman, the gate-keeper was advised to “ring a small hand-bell, or use a whistle to call the attention of the signalman, who must then put up his ‘Danger’ signals.”
The guard of the first passenger train from Oswestry was instructed to “set his timepiece by the Platform Clock, and give the Clerk at every station the time, so that he may regulate the clock at his station by it,” and similar arrangements operated up the branch lines. Porters were told that
on the arrival of a train they were to “walk the length of the platform and call out, in a clear and audible voice, the name of the station opposite the window of each carriage; and at Junctions the doors of every carriage must be opened, and the various changes announced to all passengers”—a regulation which, if still on the rule-book, is, like that against receiving tips, nowadays more often honoured in the breach than in the observance. It was even felt obligatory to include a regulation as to what should be done if a train should arrive before its advertised time, though it must appear a little superfluous to those who remember the ways of the Cambrian in those happy days, when a captious correspondent could write to the local Press to aver that, after seeing his father off at Welshpool station, he was able to ride on horseback to Oswestry and meet him on his arrival there! It was certainly a remarkable feat—though, perhaps, not so remarkable either—for, as “an official” of the Company was moved to explain in a subsequent issue, the old gentleman must have travelled by a goods train, to which passenger coaches were attached “for the convenience of the public,” and it “often did not leave Welshpool until an hour after the advertised time.”
Those “mixed trains” survived until some thirty years ago, when an unregenerate Board of Trade regulation prohibited them, and the wonderful jolts and jars which the public experienced for their “convenience” and the benefit of their liver, if not their nerves, became a thing of the past. But, as an old driver remarked to the writer not long ago,—“It was very comfortable working in those days,” and no doubt, for the traffic staff, it was.
We may smile to-day at some of these old ordinances and habits, but traffic then was not as congested as it is on an August day now, when thousands of tourists are being carried