244 History of Inland Transport 



inconvenient and dangerous if horses or cattle were used," 

 and the rights thus granted to the public under the first Act 

 were now withdrawn. 



Opened in 1832, the Leicester and Swannington Railway 

 restored to the Leicestershire colliery-owners the advantage 

 in the Leicester market of which the canal companies had 

 enabled their north-of-the-Trent competitors to deprive them 

 for so many years ; and it was now the turn of the Notting- 

 hamshire and Derbyshire coalmasters to consider what they 

 should do to meet the new situation which had arisen. They 

 first had conferences with the directors of the Loughborough, 

 Erewash and Leicester Navigations, and sought to induce 

 them to grant such reductions in tolls as would enable them 

 to compete with the Leicestershire coal, now that this was 

 no longer shut out from Leicester by the dry ditch in Charn- 

 wood Forest. But the only concessions the canal companies 

 would make were regarded as wholly inadequate by the 

 Nottinghamshire coalmasters, who, meeting at a little inn 

 at Eastwood, on August 16, 1832, resolved that " there re- 

 mained no other plan for their adoption" than to lay a rail- 

 way from their collieries to the town of Leicester. They 

 formed a Midland Counties Railway Company, obtained an 

 Act, built their line, and so laid the foundations of the great 

 system now known to us as the Midland Railway. Into that 

 system the Leicester and Swannington was absorbed in 1846. 



The position to-day of the waterways which for thirty 

 years controlled more or less the transport conditions of the 

 three counties in question, brought great wealth to their 

 owners, and, by their sole regard for their own interests, 

 forced the traders to resort to railways, is shown by the Fourth 

 or Final Report of the Royal Commission on Canals and 

 Waterways. From this one may learn that the Lough- 

 borough and Leicester Navigations, which follow the course 

 of the Soar, are liable to floods and are, also, sometimes short 

 of water, in consequence of the want of control over the supply 

 of water to mills ; and although, with the Grand Junction 

 Canal, they offer " the most direct inland water route " to 

 London for the traffic of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester 

 and of the large coal districts, they serve at present, adds the 

 Report, but an insignificant part of the traffic which travels 

 by this route. 



