Railway Expansion 243 



of the Loughborough Navigation undertook to make that 

 Charnwood Forest Canal which, with its edge-railway at 

 each end (see page 220), would connect the Leicestershire coal- 

 fields at Coleorton and Moira with Leicester, and so allow 

 of the threatened competition from the north of the Trent 

 being duly met. 



The Loughborough Navigation and its Charnwood Forest 

 extension were completed in 1798 ; but in the succeeding 

 winter the Charnwood Forest Canal burst its banks, and the 

 damage done was never repaired, the Loughborough Naviga- 

 tion trustees (who, though forced to construct the canal, did 

 not consider themselves obliged to maintain it) finding it to 

 their advantage, from a traffic point of view, to enable the 

 Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coalowners to have a virtual 

 monopoly on the Leicester market. It was under these con- 

 ditions that the Loughborough Navigation shares advanced, 

 by 1824, from their original value of ^142 iys. each to no less 

 a sum than ^4700. 



The local waterway interests maintained their supremacy 

 and were, indeed, complete masters of the situation for over 

 thirty years ; but the days of their 200 per cent dividends 

 were then numbered. Influenced by what the traders of 

 Liverpool and Manchester were doing to fight the canal and 

 river monopolists there, the Leicestershire coalowners got, 

 in 1830, an Act of Parliament authorising them to build a 

 railway from Swannington to Leicester. This line would give 

 them the facilities they wanted for their coal ; but it was 

 to be a " public," and not merely a private, railway. By one 

 of the clauses of the Act it was provided that " all persons 

 shall have free liberty to use with horses, cattle and carriages 

 the said railway upon payment of tolls." These tolls were 

 arranged alike for passengers and for goods and minerals, 

 and they varied according to whether the travellers and 

 traders provided their own conveyances or used those of 

 the railway company. In the former case passengers were 

 to pay twopence halfpenny each per mile, and in the latter 

 case threepence per mile, the tolls for goods and minerals 

 being in like proportion. In a later Act, however, passed 

 in 1833, it was declared that " whereas the main line hath 

 been constructed with a view to locomotive steam engines 

 being used, it might be very injurious to the said railway and 



