The official headquarters of the Newtown and Machynlleth Railway Company were destined for some time to remain at Machynlleth, where Mr. David Howell, its secretary, practised as a solicitor; but in January 1862 the staff of the Oswestry and Newtown had removed from Welshpool, and, together with those of the Llanidloes and Newtown, the Oswestry, Ellesmere and Whitchurch, the Buckley and the Wrexham Mold and Connah's Quay, jointly occupied two rooms on the second floor of No. 9a, Cannon Row, Westminster, Mr. George Lewis being secretary of all five companies. On the floor below the Aberystwyth and Welsh Coast Company cohabited with some dozen slate and stone companies, while Mr. Benjamin Piercy sat in state hard by in Great George Street, and Mr. Thomas Savin weaved his ambitious schemes around the corner, at No. 7, Delahay Street, with Mr. James Fraser (father of the auditor of the Cambrian in recent years) acting, under power of attorney, as his manager. This proved quite a convenient arrangement so long as Parliamentary Committee work absorbed much of the time of these officials, and here all the companies held their board meetings, generally on the same day. There were stirring times without, and it is scarcely strange if Cannon Row did not live up to the reputation of its suggestive name. Rows, indeed, were frequent and occasionally threatened to reverberate beyond the walls of the official sanctum. There is an old and honoured Cambrian official, then a young clerk sitting at his desk in the office above the board room, who remembers the occasion when an extraordinary scene was enacted on that dusty little stage. From a scuffle of some sort in the board room Mr. Gartside, a Director of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway Company, beat a hasty retreat up the stairs to the clerk's room, closely pursued by Mr. Whalley. Mr. Gartside being rather portly, was much out of breath, and suddenly pausing and turning round to recover himself on gaining the hearthrug he received Mr. Whalley's fist full in the stomach, which completed his exhaustion. Recovering his breath and as much of his dignity as the circumstances would permit, the disabled Director appealing dramatically to the astonished clerks, exclaimed "Gentlemen, I call on you to witness that the hon. Member for Peterboro' has struck me." But the clerks unable to grapple with so unaccustomed a situation, beat a hasty retreat, and nothing more was heard of what was presumably a more or less accidental "assault."