5 tons, the passenger class being bogie engines, with four coupled
wheels 6ft. diameter, and the goods being the ordinary six wheel coupled
type.

Only one change from the old to the new is, perhaps, regretted by some.
One of the qualifications of what is popularly termed the
"railwayac,"--the man who, though not in the railway service, is keenly
interested in the running and working of trains,--is that he should be
able to recite, on demand, an accurate catalogue of engine names. In
former days, on the Cambrian, as on some other lines, every engine had
its name, and there are still middle-aged men in this locality who carry
from boyhood affectionate memory of many of these labels,--the "Albion,"
the "Milford," the "Mountaineer," the "Plasffynnon," the "Maglona" and
"Gladys," the "Glansevern," the "Tubal Cain," the "Prince of Wales" and
the like, and, later the "Beaconsfield" and the "Hartington."

To some of the directors, however, the habit of christening engines,
especially after distinguished persons or the seats of the local gentry,
seemed to savour of flunkeyism and the custom was abandoned. Only on the
London and North Western and the Great Western, and the London Brighton
and South Coast, the writer believes, does it still generally obtain, and
even there it is limited to the larger passenger locomotives. Gone, too,
is the old decoration of the tenders with the Prince of Wales's plumes,
and the only ornamentation of engines and coaches finally left being the
Company's crest, the English rose entwined with the Red Dragon of Wales,
the original design for which was made and presented to the directors
many years ago by the late Mr. W. W. E. Wynne, of Peniarth, Towyn, a
noted antiquarian of his day.

[Picture: Mr. Samuel Williamson, General Manager, 1911-1922, and
Secretary, 1906-1922]

With the increased weight of engines and coaches necessarily came a
strengthening of the road. The rebuilding of the old wooden bridges has
already been noted, but some of the girder bridges have been rebuilt
also, the last of these, over the Severn at Kilkewydd, near Welshpool,
having only been completed last year. This is now a fine structure of
four clear spans of more than 60 feet, supported by concrete piers and
abutments. Then, too, for the light iron rails laid on a sandy ballast
of the old days there have been substituted 80 lb. steel rails laid on
broken granite ballast, with a corresp