CHAPTER XX 



RAILWAY EXPANSION 



THE monopolist tendencies of the waterway interests, the 

 magnitude of the profits secured, and the resort by traders 

 to the building of railways as an alternative thereto and as a 

 means of meeting the transport requirements of expanding 

 industries, were factors in the development of the railway 

 system that operated as direct causes in the construction 

 of other lines besides the Liverpool and Manchester. From 

 these particular points of view the story of the Leicester and 

 Swannington Railway is of special significance. 



In the closing years of the eighteenth century, when the 

 Canal Era was in full operation, the various new projects 

 put forward included one for constructing a canal, eleven 

 miles in length, down the Erewash valley to connect with 

 the Trent, thus facilitating the transport of coal and other 

 products from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to places 

 served by that river ; and another for rendering the Soar 

 navigable from its junction with the Trent to Leicester, 

 this being known as the Loughborough Navigation. These 

 two schemes were to form part of a network of important 

 waterways, the Soar Navigation joining the Leicester Naviga- 

 tion, and this, in turn, communicating with the Leicester- 

 shire branch of the Grand Junction Canal, thus eventually 

 giving a direct route from Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and 

 Leicestershire to London. 



The Leicestershire coalowners regarded these proposals with 

 great uneasiness. They were then supplying Leicester with 

 coal conveyed there by waggon or packhorse from the collieries 

 on the other side of Charnwood Forest, and they foresaw 

 that the proposed 'navigations would give the Derbyshire and 

 Nottinghamshire Coalowners a great advantage over them 

 in the Leicester market. They accordingly offered a strong 

 opposition to the schemes, and persisted until the projectors 



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