THE PROPOSED ELECTRIC TRAMWAY TO BETTWS-Y-COED.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIE,—I enclose a list of over eighteen hundred signatures to a memorial against the proposed overhead electric tram- way through Pen-y-Gwryd to Bettws-y-Coed (see Spectator April 23rd and 30th). There are about three hundred signa- tures additional, chiefly from Birmingham, since this list was printed. These signatures, from all parts of the country, prove that the opposition to the scheme is not the sentiment
of any exclusive class.
I have scores of letters on the subject, and I find that the strongest expressions of dislike come from the places that send the largest number of visitors to North Wales. They are quite right ; they want to get to the good parts of the country, to Beddgelert and to Bettws ; but when they get there they do not wish to see the valleys cut up with tram-lines. This interest in the Snowdon country is real; or if fanciful, it is shared by too many people to be dismissed off-hand as a trifling thing. It has been ignored by the Light Railway Commissioners, who have considered the opinions of a few local proprietors, but have not had an oppor- tunity of learning the sentiments of the classes whom the tram- way is intended to benefit, the visitors to Snowdon. Hardly one of those who have signed this memorial knew anything about the tramway project till after the Commissioners had finished their local inquiry. The Commissioners sat there in winter and escaped notice; the summer visitors did not hear of the proposals and the threatened innovation till the Commissioners had made up their minds on the subject. The ease of the memorialists is this : that the beauty of the Snowdon country is valuable to a very large number of people not resident in North Wales, and therefore ought not to be treated as a mere local matter; further, that the scheme, professing to serve the interests of tourists, ought to be con- sidered with some reference to the opinion of those who know the country as visitors. The local feeling is not unanimously in favour of the scheme, either, though the railway seems to be approved by the great landowners. in Bettws the tunnelling and blasting in the Llugwy Valley is not generally looked for as an improvement, even though the Commissioners require that new footpaths in the woods shall be made—to replace those destroyed by the railway.
—I am, Sir, &c., W. P. KER. University College, London.
[We should like to see a woodland path as made by an
electric tramway company ! We presume it would be rigidly straight, of an even width throughout, laid either with black
cinders or asphalt, and quite tidy. Not so are the wood- land ways worn smooth by men's feet ; and strange as it may seem to the Railway Commissioners, those who love the country prefer the wandering, uneven, untidy, foot-trodden tracks, one of whose charms is that none can tell when or by whom they were first trodden.—ED. Spectator.]
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