2io History of Inland Transport 



waggon- way enters, and a spout projecting over the river 

 shoots the coals into the keels, or a trap-door drops the 

 coals into the lower story, whence they must be shovelled 

 into the keels afterwards." 



John Francis expresses the opinion, in his " History of 

 the English Railway " (1851), that probably by 1750 there 

 was scarcely an important colliery that had not its own rail- 

 way. Such lines as these, however, were of a private character, 

 serving the interests only of the companies or the individuals 

 making them, without offering transport facilities to other 

 traders in return for tolls, and requiring no Act of Parliament 

 so long as they retained this character, did not require to 

 cross public roads, and could be constructed by agreement 

 among the landowners concerned. The more important 

 development came when the canal companies themselves 

 desired to supplement their canals by railways which anyone 

 paying the stipulated tolls could use in connection with canal 

 transport. Under these conditions the companies had to 

 seek for further powers from Parliament, and this they began 

 to do about the middle of the eighteenth century. 



The Trent and Mersey Canal Act of 1776, for example, 

 authorised the construction of a " rail- way " from the canal 

 to the Froghall quarries, a distance of three and a half miles. 1 

 In 1802 the same company obtained authority to construct 

 three " railways " extending from their canal in various 

 directions. The preamble of the Act (42 Geo. III. c. 25) 

 recited that the lines would be of " great advantage to the 

 extensive manufactories of earthenware . . . and of public 

 utility," and the Act accordingly sanctioned the lines " for 

 the passage of waggons and carriages of forms and construc- 

 tions, and with burthens suitable to such railways, to be 

 approved by the company," at rates duly specified. These 

 various railways, together with the Trent and Mersey Canal 

 itself, were, in 1846, taken over by the North Staffordshire 

 Railway Company, whose general manager, Mr W. D. 

 Phillipps, informs me that portions of two of them are still 

 in daily use. They are laid with cast-iron tram plates, with 

 flanges to keep the wheels in place, and ordinary waggons 



1 In the Company's further Acts of 1783 and 1785 this line was still 

 spoken of as a "rail-way," with the hyphen ; but in their Act of 1797 it 

 had become a railway without the hyphen. 



