he bowl of the pipe, the issue of the
prospectus of the Montgomeryshire Railways Company, in 1852, not
unnaturally inspired new hope in the border counties of some extension of
already projected lines in the locality. At Oswestry, in particular,
there was a rapidly growing feeling that such a development was overdue,
and they looked with eager eyes towards the possibility of forging a
connecting link with the system growing up in the heart of Powysland.
The Shrewsbury and Chester Railway, soon to become part of the Great
Western, had opened its branch to the busy Shropshire market centre under
the hills at the beginning of 1849,--the year which saw the birth of the
Oswestry Market and of the "Oswestry Advertizer," which, in its earlier
years, was to devote so many pages to the record of the making of the
Cambrian. But beyond Oswestry travellers had to proceed by coach. The
"Royal Oak," leaving the town daily at one o'clock, arrived at Newtown
about five. Goods were carried by more ponderous road transport, and it
is rather astonishing to recal that as late as 1853 dogs were employed as
draught animals, and local records include the circumstance of the death
of a "respected tradesman" by a fall from his horse, caused by the
animal's "fright at one of the carts drawn by the dogs, which are much
too often seen on the roads in this neighbourhood." Legislation was soon
to prohibit this custom, and railways to make it unnecessary.

[Picture: Some early Chairmen: reading from top left to bottom, The late
EARL VANE (afterwards Marquis Of Londonderry). Chairman of the Newtown
and Machynlleth railway Co. and first Chairman of the Consolidated
Cambrian Rys. Co., 1864-1884; The late MR. W. ORMSBY-GORE, First Chairman
of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway Co.; The late SIR W. W. WYNN, BART.,
Second Chairman of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway Co.]

It was, then, in an Oswestry of very different social habits to those of
to-day that, on June 23rd, 1853, the townspeople assembled at the call of
the Mayor, Mr. William Hodges, to consider the question of a possible
extension of the "Montgomeryshire Railway," in their direction, which was
declared by resolution to be the "only scheme before Parliament capable
of effecting this most desirable object."

But railways are not built by resolution alone, or the whole countryside
would soon have become heavy with steam. As a matter of fact, it soon
was, but not the sort of