member of the School Board from its inception, and chairman from
1891 till his death in 1901. Indeed, there was no interest in the
town,--administrative, commercial and recreative,--in which he did not
fill a conspicuous role. But, perhaps, of all his services to the
community, none was more opportune or more prolific of far-reaching
results than that happy inspiration of introducing Messrs. Davies and
Savin.

II.

Still, it takes more than a couple of contractors, however enthusiastic,
to construct a railway. Though the more visible, the organiser of the
labour is not the only parent. Not less essential, in his creative
function, is the capitalist; and even the powerful combination of
capitalist and contractor is insufficient to carry matters to a practical
conclusion without the expert guidance of the engineer. Nevertheless,
Messrs. Davies and Savin, as the new partnership was termed, had not long
to wait before their opportunity arrived.

The great "railway mania" which reached its climax on that notable
Sunday, November 30th, 1845, to be followed by the catastrophic bursting
of the bubble, had left men rather sobered in their outlook upon the
future possibilities of speculation in this alluring direction. It had
witnessed the formulation of no fewer than 1,263 separate railway
schemes, involving an (hypothetical) expenditure of 560 millions
sterling, of which 643 got no further than the issue of a prospectus,
while over 500 went through all the necessary stages of being brought
before Parliament and 272 actually became Acts--"to the ruin of thousands
who had afterwards to find the money to fulfil the engagements into which
they had so rashly entered."

Amongst these was a Bill for converting the Montgomeryshire Canal into a
railway line, for which an Act was passed in 1846, but it was a
hare-brained scheme and soon came to nought. Other proposals, however,
developed into what promised, and have since proved, to be highly
profitable enterprises. The western Midlands and North Wales had been
linked by the line from Shrewsbury to Chester, which Mr. Henry Robertson,
M.P., for the former town and afterwards for the County of Merioneth, in
which his residence, Pale, near Corwen, was situate, had carried over the
great viaducts of Chirk and Cefn. From Chester, Mr. Robert Stephenson,
even more daring, had flung his extension of the North Western system, by
way of

"The magic Bridge of Bangor
Hu