ee some
years later, "did the Great Western not aid in the capital for the
Oswestry, but they did not support the Shrewsbury. On the contrary they
opposed it with all their efforts at every step. They also, by a
manoeuvre which their position of power over the Oswestry Company and
their railway experience enabled them to carry out, succeeded in
separating the Shrewsbury from the main line, and causing it to drift
into the hands of the North Western. They, on the day of, or immediately
before the Wharncliffe meeting of the Oswestry Company, got their friends
to pay into the bankers in respect of their shares, and give their
proxies to the extent of the 0.25th in money, against the clauses in the
Shrewsbury bill, by which it was intended to connect it with the
Oswestry. By this means they cut off from the Welsh line their head and
outlet at Shrewsbury, leaving them with the Oswestry head only, to which
place they, the Great Western, alone had access, and therefore, under
their exclusive power; a result which proved highly detrimental to the
Oswestry and the Welshpool lines. During the five years from 1855 to
1859 the advantage given to the Great Western interest placed our company
practically under their control."

Small wonder that public impatience began to show signs of strain.
Cynical allusions appeared in the Press. "The only danger in making
oneself liable for new schemes," wrote one captious critic, "arises from
the possibility of their being proceeded with." Not even the "glorious
news" of the fall of Sebastopol sufficed to deflect the local mind from
the irritating habits of a dilatory directorate. After all, the Crimea
was a long way off,--much further than Chirk,--to which place, the Great
Western Company, on taking over the Shrewsbury and Chester line, had,
under the profession of "revising" the fares, substantially raised them.
This habit is one to which the community has become more accustomed in
recent years, but that was a first experience of the ways of powerful
monopolists, and it effectively emphasised the contention that it was
high time "an independent" railway company, more directly under local
control, should materialise.

Addresses were exchanged between Oswestry and Welshpool, much after the
manner of diplomatic "Notes," some of them phrased in the spirited
language which diplomats know so well how to cloak in conventional
formulas. Occasionally even the conventional formulas were dispen