amuffins." 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.

[Picture: The late CAPT. R. D. PRYCE, Chairman of the Cambrian Railways
Co., 1884-1886; The late HON. GEORGE T. KENYON, M.P., First Chairman of
the Wrexham and Ellesmere Railway Co.]

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