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

[Mabon’s Day was a general holiday on the first Monday of each month but abandoned in 1899 as a consequence of settlement of the miner's strike of 1898.]

You will see, therefore, that Mabon's Day is a dead loss to the railways, and although it is perhaps hardly within my province to express an opinion as to its effect upon other interests.

I cannot refrain from saying that, in my judgment, it is an unmitigated evil ; it entails enormous loss upon colliery proprietors, and as the men lose the wages they would earn if they worked, it can be of no advantage to them from a pecuniary point of view, while I am satisfied that it tends to unsettle the men during the whole week in which the holiday occurs.

We scarcely ever have to carry a full day's traffic on any day in Mabon's week, and as all our appliances have to be kept ready, you will see how the initial loss of Mabon's Day traffic is added to by the slackness of the rest of the week.

"As you are aware, we keep our passenger stock thoroughly up to date. The whole of our passenger trains are fitted with Smith's vacuum automatic continuous brake, and the engines, in addition to the automatic brake, are also fitted with steam brakes as auxiliaries. The whole of the carriages are lighted with Pintsch's system of gas.

The carriages originally run on the railway were all four-wheeled vehicles. The first class had three compartments cushioned, and each held six persons. They were constructed and covered very much like the old mail coaches, with windows at the sides, and carried the luggage on the top.

The second class had three compartments, each holding eight persons. They were open from the seats to the roof, which had simply iron supports, and on the top of which the luggage was carried.

The third class was a truck with sides about 4ft. 6in. high, and, to enable passengers to get in and out, the whole of the side came down in the same way as an ordinary goods truck ; there were neither seats nor covering."