Nor is this part of our story, unfortunately, complete without reference to an actual head-on collision,--an occurrence extremely rare in British railway annals--of even more appalling result in loss of life, than Welshampton. Of that day, early in 1921 when, through a most extraordinary and tragic series of misunderstandings amongst the staff at Abermule station the slow down train was allowed to proceed towards Newtown to meet the up express from Aberystwyth, on the curve a mile away, such vivid memories still linger that little need be recounted here of its harrowing details. The total death-roll, the largest in Cambrian records, was 17, and the victims included one of the most esteemed of the directorate, Lord Herbert Vane-Tempest. Here, at any rate, it was again that mysterious element, "the human factor," rather than any condition of the works or of the rolling stock used which played its melancholy part, and of that it is sufficient to say that the most interesting feature of the protracted official inquiry into the circumstances was the fact that the men concerned were represented at the inquest by the Rt. Hon. J. H. Thomas, M.P., as General Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, and his skilful conduct of the case was, apparently, a notable and important influence in determining the final--and reconsidered--verdict of the coroners jury. [Picture: The late LORD HERBERT VANE-TEMPEST, a Director of the Company (who was fatally injured in the Abermule accident, 1921)] III. But these are sorrowful records from which we gladly turn to the lighter side of railway annals. As a link between them we may mention one "accident" which happily unattended with very serious results in itself, was the direct cause of a famous, and at the time, a sensational "incident." In 1887 the down morning mail train ran off the line at Ellesmere and it was held that this was due to delay on the part of the porter in not being at the points in time to work them properly. For at this time the interlocking system, made compulsory under the Act of 1889, had not been installed, and the safety of trains depended on due attention to the pointsman's functions. When, in 1891, a Committee of the House of Commons, of which Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was chairman, sat to inquire into the length of railway hours, the Ellesmere mishap was brought up as an example of what occurred when railway servants were expected to work for long stretches, though Mr. John Conacher (who had joined the Company's staff in 1865, become secretary on the retirement of Mr. George Lewis in 1882, and later had succeeded to the managership) was able to produce evidence that it was not so much weariness of the flesh as the fact that the porter was playing cards with a postman waiting with the mails and a stranded passenger waiting for the train which led to his late arrival at the points.