OPENING OF THE G.W.R. 109 



Bill, when a public meeting was held at Salt Hill to 

 rejoice in the defeat of the railway project, the inn- 

 keepers seemed to think that they could not come 

 to much harm. They were, however, bitterly dis- 

 illusioned. 



It is curious, nowadays, to look back upon the 



time when the Great Western Railway was first built. 



The authorities of Eton College, together with the 



Court, had effectually driven the railway from Windsor 



and Eton, and the College people had also secured 



the insertion of a clause in the Company's Act for- 



biddino- the erection of a station at Slough. Not- 



withstanding this, however, trains stopped at Slough 



from the very first. The Company did this by an 



ingenious evasion of the spirit, if not the letter, of 



their Parliamentary obligations. By their Act they 



we're forbidden to hidld a station at Slough, but 



nothing had been said about trains stopping there! 



Accordingly, two rooms were hired at a public house 



beside the line where Slough station now stands, and 



tickets were issued there, comfortably enough. The 



Eton College authorities were maddened by this 



smart dodge, and applied for au injunction against 



the Company, which was duly refused. 



This is not the only railway romance belonging to 

 Slough, for the Slough signal-box has had a romance 

 of its own. The cabin w\as erected in 1844, and one 

 of the earliest messages the signalman wired to London 

 by the then wonderfid new invention of the electric 

 telegraph, was intelligence of the birth of the Duke of 

 Edinburgh. The following year a man named Tawell 

 committed a murder at Salt Hill, and escaped by the 



