ding, in the
absence of the Marquess, concluded the proceedings on a happy note of
assurance that directors and shareholders were "of one mind," and full of
sanguine expectations as to the future of their undertaking. The throes
of consolidation are sometimes not less severe than those of birth
itself, but they can be as successfully survived.

CHAPTER X. INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS.

"_Railway travelling is safer than walking, riding, driving, than
going up and down stairs . . . and even safer than eating_, _because
it is a fact that more people choke themselves in England than are
killed on all the railways of the United Kingdom_."--THE LATE SIR
EDWARD WATKIN.

Looking back on considerably more than half a century of history it is no
small tribute to human care and human ingenuity that serious accidents on
the Cambrian Railways have been relatively rare. This is all the more
remarkable because all but some twelve miles of its total length, and up
to a few years ago, not even as much as that, has had to be worked on a
single line, and with the rapidly increasing tourist traffic of recent
times, this has placed a strain on both the human and the metallic
machine which may easily try the strongest nerves and the most powerful
appliances. Obviously it is due to the special care taken in management,
and observed, with few if tragic exceptions, by those directly
responsible for the working of the trains.

Early in their inception, elaborate regulations were drawn up by the
organisers of the original local undertakings, of which a copy, issued by
the Oswestry and Newtown Company, as adopted "at a meeting of the Board
of Directors, held on Saturday, the 25th February, 1860," and preserved
among the papers of the late Mr. David Howell of Machynlleth, gives some
interesting indication. It is bound in vellum, fitted with a clasp, and
adorned within with a series of woodcuts, descriptive of the old-day
signalman, clad in tall hat, tail coat and white trousers, explanatory of
the hand signal code, with flags, which preceded the more general use of
the modern signals, controlled from a signal box. Following the precept,
made familiar by the nursery rhymes of our childhood, it informs us that

"RED is a signal of DANGER, and to STOP.

GREEN is a signal of CAUTION, and to GO SLOWLY.

WHITE is a Signal of ALL RIGHT, and to GO ON.

As an additional precaution, should no flag be handy, i