"_Border Counties Advertizer" Office, Oswestry_, 1922. [Picture: Directors & Offices on a Farewell Visit to Aberystwyth, May 1922. Reading from left to right:--Mr. W. K. Minshall (Solicitor); Sir Joseph Davies, M.P.; Mr. Alfred Herbert; Lord Kenyon; Lt.-Col. Apperley; Mr. G. C. McDonald (Engineer and Loco. Supt.); Mr. S. G. Vowles (Assistant-Sec.); Mr. C. B. O. Clarke; Mr. H. Warwick (Supt. of Line); Mr. T. Craven (Deputy Chairman); Lt.-Col. David Davies, M. P. (Chairman); Mr. T. C. Sellars (General Manager's Assistant); Mr. S. Williamson (General Manager and Secretary). Photo by H. H. Davies & Son, Aberystwyth] CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. "_No Engineer could succeed without having men about him as highly gifted as himself_."--ROBERT STEPHENSON. I. When what eventually became the Cambrian Railways was born it was a very tiny baby. Compared with its ultimate frame, it possessed neither arms nor legs, nor even head, and consisted merely of heart and a small part of its trunk. It began "in the air" at Newtown and ended, if possible, in still more ethereal poise, at Llanidloes. Physical junction with existing lines there was none, and the engines--four in number--which drew the coaches that composed those early trains had to be brought by road, from Oswestry, in specially constructed wagons, not without difficulties and adventures, and placed on the metals at the railhead, to live their life and perform their duty in "splendid isolation." It was only gradually that limb after limb was added, and subsequently constructed railways were incorporated or absorbed, until the consolidated system obtained the rather attenuated proportions with which we are familiar to-day, stretching from Whitchurch, on the Cheshire border, to Aberystwyth, on the shores of Cardigan Bay, with its two chief subsidiary "sections," one (including some half dozen miles of the original track) from Moat Lane Junction to Brecon, and another from Dovey Junction to Pwllheli; shorter branches or connecting lines from Ellesmere to Wrexham, Oswestry to Llangynog, Llanymynech to Llanfyllin, Abermule to Kerry, Cemmes Road to Dinas Mawddwy, Barmouth Junction to Dolgelley, and two lengths of narrow gauge line, from Welshpool to Llanfair Caereinion and Aberystwyth to Devil's Bridge, altogether exactly 300 miles.