Volunteers."

The special train then returned to Welshpool, where Mrs. Owen of
Glansevern declared the line opened. Then the inevitable procession, and
the not less inevitable "cold collation" and speech making, and dancing.
Only one untoward incident marked the day. Owing to the crush to board
the returning train from Oswestry, the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry and
Montgomeryshire Militia bands got left behind, and the Oswestry Rifle
Corps musicians, who had been more successful in the scramble, had to do
all the blowing for their stranded comrades. But, it is recorded, they
blew with triple vigour, as well they might!

Oswestry was now, at long last, connected with Montgomeryshire, but there
were those who felt in no mood for rejoicing in that event. Among the
residents of the Severn Valley were those who, like the redoubtable Mr.
Weller "considered that the rail is unconstitootional and an inwader o'
privileges." They solemnly shook their heads and deplored the doom of
the mail-coach. What, they asked, was to become of Tustin? Tustin had
driven the mail coach from Shrewsbury every morning, summer and winter,
starting from the Post Office at 4 a.m., and covering the score of miles
to Welshpool in about two hours. To see him and his fine horses arrive
at the Royal Oak was a source of daily pride to Welshpolonians. "In the
summer mornings," says a writer in the "Licensing Victualler's Gazette"
in 1878, looking back upon those days, "there was always a number of
people up to see the mail arrive, and the cordial and cheery welcome
given to those passengers who alighted to partake of breakfast at the
hotel, by the buxom and genial landlady, Mrs. Whitehall, was a thing to
be remembered and talked about. She was the pink of what such a woman
should be, and the fame of her cuisine reached very far beyond the county
in which she lived." Later in the morning, the thirteen miles between
Welshpool and Newtown were done in little more than an hour. But "the
days of coaching were drawing to a close even in Wales; the iron horse
was slowly to elbow one coach and then another off the road, putting them
back as it were, nearer and nearer to the coast; until even Tustin and
his famous Aberystwyth mail had to succumb. But they made a gallant
fight of it, and died what we may call gamely." In recent years the
coach, or its modern counterpart, the charabanc and motor bus, have come
into something of their own again, and are provi