22o History of Inland Transport 



way wharf to Tucknall has never been relaid or altered in 

 any way, and, therefore, is a most interesting relic of ancient 

 times. To see waggons with flat wheels drawn over cast- 

 iron rails one yard long by a horse, cannot fail to interest 

 those who watch the workings of railways, and it most clearly 

 shows the great improvements made and the perseverance 

 which has been required to develop the present gigantic 

 railway system out of such small beginnings." 



The Charnwood Forest Canal, again, concerning which I 

 shall have more to say later, was a connecting link between 

 two lines of edge-railway, the purpose of the combined land 

 and water route being to enable Leicestershire coal to reach 

 the Leicester market. 



It will thus be seen that, whilst the coalowners introduced 

 railways in the first instance, it was the canal companies 

 themselves who, in the days before locomotives, mainly 

 developed and established the utility of a new mode of traction 

 which was eventually to supersede to so material an extent 

 the inland navigation they favoured. It was open to those 

 companies to adapt their undertakings much more com- 

 pletely to the new conditions, if they had had sufficient fore- 

 sight and enterprise so to do. 



The signs of the times were obvious enough to those who 

 were able and willing to read them, and there were many 

 indications that canals would assuredly be not only supple- 

 mented, but supplanted, by railways. An impartial authority 

 like Thomas Telford, in adding a postscript to an article 

 on " Canals " which he had contributed to Archdeacon 

 Plymley's " General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire," 

 wrote under date November 13, 1800 : 



" Since the year 1797, when the above account of the 

 inland navigation of the county of Salop was made out, 

 another mode of conveyance has frequently been adopted in 

 this country to a considerable extent ; I mean that of form- 

 ing roads with iron rails laid along them, upon which the 

 articles are conveyed on waggons, containing from six to 

 thirty cwt. ; experience has now convinced us that in countries 

 whose surfaces are rugged, or where it is difficult to obtain 

 water for lockage, where the weight of the articles of pro- 

 duce is great in comparison with their bulk, and where they 

 are mostly to be conveyed from a higher to a lower level, 



