The Sun.
London, England, 1845-06-27 00:00:00

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

MANCHESTER AND BIRMINGHAM CON-
TINUATION AND WELSH JUNCTION RALL-

WAY.
A highly-respectable meeting of the inhabitants of the
borough of Aberystwlth was held on Monday afternoon, at
the Town Hall, for the purpose of having laid before them the
report of the Directors of the above projected railway, as to the
present position of the Company, and the merits and advan-
tages of the line itself. The meeting was convened by the
Mayor. The object of this project is to put the port of
Aberystwith in railway communication with the manufac-
turing districts of Staffordshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire;
or, in the terms of the prospectus' " to connect Smith and
North Wales, the improving and important pert and
fashionable viaterin,,e-place of Aberystwith, Shropshire and
Cheshire, &c., with Manchester, Lancashire, Staffordshire,
the Potteries, Derbyshire, and the north-east of England."
The Company originally intended to carry out the whole of
the line from Crewe to Aberystwith, but an arrangement has
been entered into between them and the Birmingham and
Manchester Company, under which the latter will complete
the portion of the works between Crewe and Whitchurch.
From Whitchurch the line takes its course to Ellesmere and
Oswestry, through a country presenting no engineering diffi-
culties. Between Oswestry and Welshpool it strikes the valley
of she Severn, which it follows some miles beyond Llanidloes,
where, by a tunnel of about a mile and half, apparently the
only heavy work throughout the whole course of the line, it
reaches the valley of the Rheidol, down which it proceeds, al-
most on a level, to the port of Aberystwith. We thus notice
the line, because, in our journey to Aberystwith, we passed
over the greater portion of it, and were struck with the re-
markable facilities which the valleys of the Severn and the
Rheidol present for the oonstruction of a railroad into the most
mountainous recesses of the principality.
It appears that a meeting of the inhabitants of Aberystwith
was-held in May last, at which they pledged themselves to sup-
port the projected line, and the meeting of Monday was con-
vened in order that the project might again come before them
in a more matured shape. The gentlemen who attended the
meeting as a deputation were Sir John E. de Beauvoir, Mr.
David Waddington (Deputy Chairman of the Manchester and
Birmingham Company), Mr. R. Watkins, one of the Direc-
tors of the Brighton and Chichester Company; Mr. W. B.
Prichard, the engineer ; and Mr. J. Bethell, the Solicitor of the
Company. Mr. Evans (the Mayor) was in the chair.
The advertisement by which the meeting had been convened
having been read,
The Mavort said—Gentlemen would bear in mind that a
meeting of the inhabitants was held in May last, at which the
projected railway was unanimously approved as a project likely
to confer great benefits upon the inhabitants of Aberystwith.
—( Hear.) He would, in now bringing the subject before
them, merely state that, firmly believing a railway from the
manufacturing districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Stafford-
shire would be of the greatest possible advantage to the
borough, he was sure every attention would be paid to the gen-
tlemen who had done the inhabitants the honour to attend for
the purpose of laying before them the merits of the projected
undertaking.—(Hear.) He would, without further taking up
their time, introduce to them Mr. Waddington, the Deputy-
Chairman of the Manchester and Birmingham ailway.
Mr. WADDINGTON said—Gentlemen, when the promoters
of the Manchester and Birmingham and Welsh Junction
Railway received an official communication from yourself (the
Mayor), announcing that at a meeting held in this borough on
the 6th of May you pledged yourselves to support a railway
to run from Crewe to Aberystwith, those gentlemen placed
themselves in communication with the Directors of the Man-
chester and Birmingham Railway, whose line they proposed to
join at Crewe. I, as:deputy-chairman of that Company, had
the honour of receiving a deputation from the promoters of the
intended railway ; and having conferred with them upon the
proposed junction with our line at Crewe, I made inquiries
as to the possibility of the project, and, as far as I pos-
sibly could, I endeavoured to ascertain whether it was likely
to prove a remunerative line to its promoters, and was such
a one as the Birmingham and Manchester Company could
legitimately and, to themselves, advantageously assist. The
result of that investigation—and it was a careful and searching
investigation—was that the Birmingham and Manchester Com-
pany entered heartily into the scheme, and four of their board
joined, as you will see by the prospectus, the directory of the
new company, and I now appear before you in a double capa-
city—as deputy chairman of the Birmingham Company, and
as a director of the Manchester and Birmingham Continuation
and Welsh Junction Railway. I think it right to state this, as I
confess we should not have supported the line, if we had not felt
that it had the hearty support of the inhabitants of this dis-
trict, and that it was calculated to develop the resources, and
as it were, create a traffic along its entire course. The im-
portance of the arrangement which has been effected be-
tween the new company and the Birmingham and Manches-
ter Company, is so evident, that were I speaking to gentle-
men conversant with railway matters, it would be altogether
unnecessary for me to:say a word upon the subject ; but as the
subject of railways can, I should presume, scarcely have been
so much discussed, or can be so well understood by you as by
those who are living in the midst of them, enjoying their con-
venienre and accommodation, and, of course, understanding
their various operations, perhaps it may not be out of place if
I detail to you the advantages accruing to a projected line
from its junction with another railww possessing a good ter-
minus. You might carry out the railway from Crewe to
Aberystwith, and develop, as I believe will be developed, a
good and paying traffic, but having done so, the next step
would be to avail yourself OR reasonable terms of the advantages
of a railway having a good terminus in the heart of the
districts with which it was your object to place yourselves in
communication.—( Hear, hear.) Now, the arrangements
entered into between the promoters of the projected
line and the Birmingham and Manchester Company
afford these advantages, and they afford them on the most rea-
sonable and liberal terms.—( Hear.) In truth, gentlemen, the
Birmingham and Manchester Company are treating with the
promoters of the new project upon the most liberal terms.—
(Cheers.) They are supporting its formation, and will be
happy, when it is farmed, to enter upon that equitable co-
operation which they have already determined upon carrying
into effect.—(Cheers.) Gentlemen, I have said that I made
every possible inquiry into the merits of the proposed line
before I consented to give it my support. The result of that
inquiry, and the information I have since obtained, con-
vince me that not only will it, by its connexion with the Bir-
mingham and Manchester Railway, place the whole of those
great manufacturing districts in communication with Wales,
but that it will, when the lines now being applied for
shill have been completed, place also Huddersfield, Leeds,
and the whole of Yorkshire, in communication
with a large portion of the principality.—( Hear, hear.)
In short it will place the whole of the district through which
it passes in railway communication with Edinburgh to the
north, and London and Portsmouth to the south. lam sure,
gentlemen, you will consider these are important points to bear
in mind considering the project now before you. And, gen-
tlemen, in reflecting upon these facts you must not view them
as relating only to the commercial intercourse which the pro-
jected line will facilitate between Wales and the great manu-
facturing districts of the north : you are not to forget that
Aberystwith, though greatly admired as a watering-place, and
justly celebrated for the beauty of its surrounding scenery, is
yet so out of the way, as well from the difficulty of getting
across the country to it as from its distance, that compa-
ratively few persons come down amongst you. The
place is very beautiful, that we all admit, and we of the
manufacturing districts I speak of Lancashire, York-
snire, Birmingham, Staffordshire, and other places—
would be very happy to get down here if we had time,
and perhaps • some of us might say, if the expense of getting
down here were not so great, I know of no place that the
inhabitant of the district I have spoken of could prefer as
a summer residence for his family; but if he were willing to
incur the trouble and expense of sending four or five children
and his domestics down, he would, I am sure, be quite un-
willing to separate himself from his family—for a separation
it would certainly be with the present mode of conveyance
—(Hear)—inasmuch as it would occupy the greater part of
the week in travelling to and fro between Manchester or
Birmingham and Aberystwith.—(Hear.) If a railway were
carried between this town and Crewe, such is the favour-
able nature of the gradients, that the Manchester merchant

or the Birmingham iron-master might leave his counting-
house at one o'clock on Saturday, and reach his family at
Aberystwith at five o'clock the same afternoon.--( Hear,
hear.) He might remain here the whole of Sunday, leave
by an early train—say at six o'clock on the Monday morning,
and reach his office in Manchester or Birmingham at ten
o'clock.—( Hear.) We now go from Manchester to Crewe
by the express train in 40 minutes, the distance is 31 miles,
and as the distance between Manchester and Aberystwith
will be about 130 miles, you will perceive that at the same
rate of speed the journey between those places could be made
in something less than four hours.—( Hear, hear.) It may be
said, it has been /said, that " You have seaports nearer than
Aberystwith." It is true we have a sea coast which commands
and will continue to command, its thousands of visitants, but we
have nothing of that which renders Aberystwith so delightful
to all those who have the means and time to visit it, nor have
we the delightful scenery through which the proposed line
passes in its course.—( Wear.) We know that gentlemen from
the manufacturing districts, when they visit a watering-place,
are overtaken, like all other gentlemen, by irnnuz, and
that a sea beach alone will not at all times serve
to relieve the mind or offer sufficient attractions to
induce a lengthened or renewed visit ' • but here you have,
as I have already noticed, a delightful country, where new
and striking objects meet the eye in every direction, a country
which, if I may be permitted to judge from what I have my-
self felt, has only to be visited to be admired. And I may
here mention that this line, joining as it does the Birmingham
and Manchester Railway at Crewe, has an advantage which no
other scheme for accommodating Aberystwith could possibly
afford—l mean that of being in direct communication with the
immense wealth of the manufacturing districts of Lancashire
and Yorkshire, and Birmingham and Staffordshire. As to the
Worcester and Cheltenham districts, you have at present some
portion thereof, but the completion of the project will, as I
have said, throw open the whole of Birmingham and its neigh-
bourhood to you, so that you will have a communication with
that densely populated portion of the country, in addition to
*hat I consider belongs essentially to you—viz., the direct, the
only line of railway communication with the manufacturing dis-
tricts of the north, so that it will possess great and most superior
merits over any other line that can be projected. I repeat that
it combines the advantage of opening a railway route to the
manufactures of the north, with the advantage of communica-
ting equally with the south. The port of Aberystwith is;too, I
am informed, thirty miles nearer London than Fishguard ; this
is an important point in reference to our trade with the south
of Ireland, and is well worthy of our consideration. There
can be no doubt (therefore that Aberystwith is the port from
which the manufactures of the north of England could be most
speedily and most economically shipped for Wexford, and that
connexion with the projected line from the latter place to
Bantry Bay, the proposed railway through Crewe and Aberyst-
'with, would become an important channel of communication
between Lancashire, Yorkshire Staffordshire, and the sur-
rounding districts
Aberystwith with America. But it may be said that
cannot accommodate such a traffic ; that there is
not sufficient
from the able reportorfvessels of heavy tonnage. Now, I find
your harbour-master, that at a very
moderate cost yo•poarot can be made to be second to none on
the coast ; and that, s.harbour of refuge, it presents strong
claims, might have sufficient water, eight hours out of twelve,
to admit steamers laegoef enought to carry the whole of the Irish
traffic. In speaking
appears that
railroad, the harbour-
master says It app.
direct communication
the coemasmt ucnoiascattioonf
by steam is open from
,AAberciosattwitah
andA Wicklow, and direct
Ireland—viz, by Wexford
through to Valencia and theneewtO
to be a more direct line from London
__m eritchaa.n Pltristhainirlaeanr:
The distance across the
Holyhead, Fisbgnard, or Milford.
bay and St. George's Channel, being about 80 miles, a trade
with Ireland would be obtained "—tie is
men, in reference to the railroad being car:Cking, gentle-
to Aberyst-
with—" And many families would embrace the opportunity
of coming to Aberytsvrith from Ireland; and, on the other
hand, those resident in Herefordshire, Shropshire, and
other places adjacent, would be able to visit that country. At
present it is almost an impossibility to visit any of those places.
The railroad would not only afford great accommodation to
those who desired to travel through the country, but open the
markets both of Ireland and Wales."—( Hear, hear.) The
harbour-master goes on to say, " The harbour once com-
pleted, Aberystwith will become one of the most important
sea-ports in Wales. Vessels with cargoes, instead of being
wind-bound for weeks in the Channel, as they now frequently
are, could then put in to Aberystwith, and discharge their car-
goes, which could be carried direct to Birmingham, 'Manches-
ter, or elsewhere by railway, and thus the cargo might be
saved and the town benefited."--( Hear.) Your port, it ii said,
has not sufficient water for large vessels, Gentlemen, lam