First Railway Owned Navigation

[magpie patrick]

1 hour ago, Heartland said:

The BCN was never railway owned. The arrangement act with the London & Birmingham Railway enabled share dividends to be maintained for BCN shareholders and that arrangement was continued through to 1947, but the BCN remained independent, all be it influenced and controlled by future railway companies (LNWR/LMS). 

The arrangement between the BCN and the railway companies was covered in Edwind Pratt's book on the viability of Inland Navigation published in the early 20th Century (I haven't got my copy to hand). In the discussion Pratt's antipathy towards canals shows and clouds his thinking - at one point I wanted to write a quite angry and learned letter to him, then remembered he was writing 100 years before I was reading. However I've no doubt the arrangement would have incurred the wrath of the monopoly and mergers commission had there been one!

[Pluto]

The plan below comes from the Jesse Hartley collection held by the Merseyside Maritime Museum's archive, and dates from 1833. It shows some of the MB&BC's land which was to be taken by the proposed Manchester & Bolton Railway. Hartley, Liverpool's Dock Engineer, was asked to be the railway's engineer, and he certainly examined the proposal. The MB&BC had got its Act for conversion to railway in 1831, with subsequent developments leading to the railway being built, to some extent, parallel to the canal, which was kept open.