. SOME EARLIER BRANCHES.

"Y ddel gerbydres welir--yn rhedeg
Ar hyd ein dyffryn-dir,
Ac yn gynt ar ei hynt hir
Y fellten ni theithia filltir.

O ganol tre Llangynog--am naw
Cychwyn wneir yn dalog,
Fe'n ceir cyn tri'n fwy gwisgi na'r gog,
A hoenus yn Llundain enwog." {91}

--A WELSH BARD.

The traveller along the main artery of the Cambrian, from Whitchurch to
Aberystwyth, will note that, as he proceeds on his way, past the Welsh
border foothills, and on by the waters of the Severn to the highlands of
central Montgomeryshire, a series of more or less attractive lateral
valleys branch off to the left, and still more definitely, to the right.
Up some of these the eyes of ambitious engineers and railway promoters
had often been cast as the main line was being constructed. No less
eagerly did the residents at the remoter ends of these sequestered
hollows among the hills look forward to the day when they might be linked
up with the central system, and so brought into direct touch with the
great world beyond.

There had, as we have seen, already been plans for carrying a line right
up the Vyrnwy or the Tanat Valley, through the Berwyns to the vale of the
Dee--the wonderful West Midland line which was to run from Shrewsbury to
the shores of Cardigan Bay, over hill and down dale with "only one
tunnel." But the route left Llanfyllin eight miles to the south, and
Llanfyllin, as the largest town among these upland valleys, was not
disposed to take that lying down. The Oswestry and Newtown line crossed
the end of the vale, at Llanymynech, only nine miles away, and that was
clearly the route by which the engineers could most easily construct a
connective link. In the autumn of 1860, one of Llanfyllin's most
prominent citizens, Mr. J. Pugh, had posted over to Oswestry, where he
had an interview with Mr. Whalley. "Can you help us to get a railway?"
Yes, anything in his power, the hon. Member for Peterboro' would do, and
he was as good as his word. Within a month a crowded audience pressed
into the Llanfyllin Town Hall to listen to the scheme which Mr. Whalley
and his colleagues had to lay before them. The chair was taken by Mr. R.
M. Bonner Maurice, of Bodynfoel, who had, it was happily recalled,
presided at one of the meetings eight years earlier at Newtown out of
which the germ of the Montgomeryshire Railways sprang. This was, indeed,
good augury, an