financially. For many years, indeed, the Company existed only in name, and in 1921 it was formally absorbed in the Cambrian, which had worked it, under agreement, from the outset. But let us go back to the more successful enterprise in the neighbouring valley. The middle of July 1863 saw the Llanfyllin branch ready for traffic and on the seventeenth the opening ceremony took place. It included an excursion to Borth in twenty-three carriages packed with people, many of whom had never seen the sea. The train, we are told by a contemporary chronicler, failed to keep time, but who cared? There were some piquant scenes on the beach when the ladies, essaying to bathe, found themselves closely surrounded by "gentlemen" in anchored boats, but that, again, was a short-coming in the ordered programme which was readily overlooked! Anyhow, it seems, a good many people managed to miss the return train which "started punctually" at 1-30, arriving at Llanfyllin at half-past five, and so they also missed the dinner, presided over by the High Sheriff of Montgomeryshire, Mr. J. Dugdale, and the speeches, with which the official proceedings closed. The next day, following the precedent set at the opening of the Llanidloes and Newtown Railway, Messrs. Savin and Ward entertained the navvies to a "good substantial dinner" of their own, after which they, too, were entertained to a flow of oratory from the "big wigs" of the railway company and the locality, and another series of toasts were honoured with "three times three."