Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Railway Magazine - Interview with Mr. Ammon Beasley - TVR - 1898 . . . .

Mr. Arthur Edward Guest - Chairman, Taff Vale Railway.

You have yourself, in your History of the Great Western Railway,' written a good deal on this subject , and will not require enlightenment from me upon any phase of it ; but as an old Great Western man I have naturally a sort of regretful affection for the broad gauge.

There was not a man on the whole staff who did not pride himself upon being connected with it, and when the force of circumstances compelled it to go under the regret was universal. I have no doubt this feeling was due to the fact that the broad gauge was exceptional, and the 'splendid isolation' of the Great Western was considered a distinction rather than otherwise. I well remember that at one of the half-yearly meetings of the Great Western a shareholder passionately defended the broad gauge because it was exceptional, and, therefore, thoroughly English. 'Everything English is exceptional,' he said; but it can not be said that the meeting quite accepted that as a statement of fact, although those present were in complete sympathy with the speaker in his preference for the broad gauge. Commercially, of course, the abolition of the broad gauge was inevitable, and the real regret I feel for its disappearance is, therefore, entirely sentimental.