w schemes. One of the sternest of all controversies still raged round
the moot point whether the line was to run from Oswestry to Newtown or
from Newtown to Oswestry, and even private friends fell out as to the
exact spot on the proposed route at which the actual work should begin!
"Discord triumphs--local prejudice is rampart--personal ill-will
abounds--as a necessary consequence no one will apply for the
unappropriated shares. Dissolution alone is imminent," cries the
distracted editor.

It was certainly becoming apparent that this was no time for further
dallying. The Shrewsbury and Welshpool undertaking, it was reported, was
enlisting "an amount of public interest and support seldom equalled in
the history of railways," and early in 1856 the directors of the Oswestry
and Newtown line found it expedient to assure the community that
"preparations for letting the contract were in active progress" and the
first sod was to be cut on April 11th. Alas for the optimism of eager
pioneers and the credulity of an impatient public! April 11th came and
proved nothing else than a slightly belated "All Fools Day"! No sod was
cut. Not a spade or a barrow was visible, and the operation might, by
all appearances be postponed till the Greek Kalends. Patience, already
sorely tried, became utterly exhausted. In June the Shrewsbury and
Welshpool Railway Bill was read a third time in the House of Commons, and
thus the rival scheme loomed still larger upon the horizon. Men had yet
to learn that railways could be co-operative as well as competitive.

But so fully, indeed, was the popular mind at that time obsessed with the
rivalry of routes that a rumour was started imputing to the directors of
the Oswestry and Newtown Company the intention of "disuniting the line
between Oswestry and Welshpool." As if there were not disunion enough
already! More genial humorists launched the story that the Prince of
Wales was coming down expressly to cut the first sod and had ordered a
new pair of "navvys" for the occasion to be made by a Welshpool
bootmaker. Feeling, however, was rising again, which was not moderated
by the apologia of the directorate suggestive that it was all due to
differences between them and the engineers. The engineers themselves
were more or less at variance, and, in April 1856, Mr. Barlow, the chief,
finding it impossible to agree with his assistant, Mr. Piercy, resigned.

Matters had come to so critical a juncture