Evolution of the Railway 219 



only further reference at all to the Bill is in the " General 

 Index" to the volumes for 1790-1801, where, under the 

 heading " Navigations : Petitions to make Dram Roads to 

 Canals, &c.," it is said of the Bill in question " Not pro- 

 ceeded in." 



There is no reason to doubt that this first scheme for the 

 construction of a railway even though under the name of a 

 " dram road " which would have been not only independent 

 of canal transport but in direct competition therewith, was 

 killed through the opposition of the then powerful canal 

 interests. The tradition in Cardiff is that the Glamorganshire 

 Canal Company " got hold " of the leading promoters, and 

 persuaded them to abandon their scheme by electing them 

 members of the managing committee of the canal. Whether 

 or not some additional inducement was offered to them is 

 not known. In any case, there was no further attempt to 

 set up a railway in direct and avowed competition with a 

 canal until the great fight over the Liverpool and Manchester 

 Railway Bill, a quarter of a century later. 



The significance of all these facts will be found still greater 

 in the light of what I shall have to say subsequently in regard 

 to the influence of canal interests and canal precedents alike 

 on railway development and on railway legislation. 



In some instances the railways belonging to the period"^ 

 here under review were constructed by the canal companies 

 not merely as feeders to the canals but as substitutes for 

 lengths of canal where the making of an artificial waterway 

 presented special difficulties. The Lancashire Canal Com- 

 pany, incorporated in 1792, laid a line of railway for five 

 miles, passing through the town of Preston, to connect two 

 sections of canal. The Ashby Canal Company, under an Act 

 of 1794, avoided a considerable expense in the construction 

 of locks by supplementing thirty miles of canal on the level 

 with intermediate lengths of railway to the extent of another 

 twenty miles. Writing in 1884, Clement E. Stretton says, 

 in his " Notes on Early Railway History," concerning these 

 old tram-roads of the Ashby Canal Company : " One part 

 has since been altered and absorbed into the Ashby and 

 Worthington Railway ; l but the branch from Ticknall tram- 



1 Amalgamated by the Midland Railway Company. 



