[Picture: Two Faithful Servants. The late MR. RICHARD BRAYNE, Secretary 1895-1900. MR. T. S. GOLDSWORTHY, Store-keeper, and Senior Officer at the time of its amalgamation with the Great Western] It has, however, been an agency beyond the control of directorate or internal management which has shaped the final destiny of the Company. From time to time during the years up to 1914 rumours have circulated concerning the prospective purchase of the Cambrian by one of its great neighbours, either the Great Western, or, more often, the London and North Western, with which it had long maintained a close working alliance. But nothing ever matured in this direction. Cynics were apt to suggest that the explanation might be sought in the parable of the two dogs and the bone, neither of them really wanting it, but each anxious that the other should not get it. Anyhow, it seemed as if the Cambrian would become permanently established as the largest of the independent Welsh Railways, when the Great War plunged, not only this country, but more than half the civilized world into economic chaos. Emerging from its war-time experience of State-control, the Cambrian, like other railways, found itself faced with a hugely-augmented labour bill, to meet which out of potential future revenue, appeared practically impossible. It was under these embarrassing circumstances that Sir Eric Geddes, as Minister of Transport, devised his grouping scheme, by which all English, Welsh and Scottish railways are amalgamated in groups as a means to more economical working. Together with all the other independent Welsh Companies, the Cambrian was placed in the Western Group, with the Great Western as absorber, and, the proposal meeting with the approval of the proprietors, to whom the transfer offered, on the whole, a decided financial advantage, while the directors were consoled for loss of office with a grant of 7,000 pounds, it was merely left for the Amalgamation Tribunal to give its final assent. This was done early in March and on Lady Day, 1922, almost exactly seventy years after its original inception, the Company, as a separate and independent organisation, officially ceased to be. III.