inning with a row of lodging houses. Alas!
not for the last time, the parable of the man who built upon the sands
was to have its application to these Welsh coast undertakings. The
houses were no sooner finished than they began to sink, and some time
later they were pulled down and the material put to more hopeful and
profitable use.

[Picture: Latest Cambrian Passenger Express Engine]

Ynyslas remains to-day a lonely swamp, but somewhat better luck attended
the effort to carry the excursionist on to Borth. The line was pushed on
there, and an old farm house, on the outskirts of what was then nothing
but a tiny fishing village, was converted into a station. The following
July the line was open for traffic. Curiously enough, little public
interest seems to have been aroused in Borth itself by the event. The
inhabitants of the village were mainly engaged in seafaring, and the
arrival of the steam engine, in the opinion of some, boded no good. As
for English visitors--what use were they? The story, indeed, is told
that some four enterprising tourists, who had arrived ahead of the
railway, sought accommodation in vain in the village, and had perforce to
make the best of it in a contractor's railway wagon that stood on a
siding of the unfinished line. They cuddled up under a tarpaulin sheet
and settled down for the night, when someone gave the wagon a shove and
starting down an incline on the unballasted track it proceeded merrily on
its way to Ynyslas. Not so merry the affrighted and unwilling
passengers, who, when day broke, discovered themselves marooned in a
remote spot miles from anywhere productive of breakfast bacon and eggs!

But, if Borth itself looked on askance, Aberystwyth was ready enough to
acclaim the approach of the railway. The resort on the Rheidol had
already begun to attract visitors who completed the journey from
Llanidloes or Machynlleth by coach, and now there was the prospect, in
the early future, of the railway running into the town itself. So, very
early on the day when the first train was to steam into and out of Borth,
vehicles of all sorts crowded the road from Aberystwyth, the narrow
street of Borth was rapidly thronged with an excited multitude who flowed
over on the sands. At 8-30 a.m. the train left, with 100 excursionists.
It was followed by another at 1 p.m., for which 530 took tickets. There
was a great scramble for seats, and every one of the thirty coaches of
w