Experience soon showed that the Shropshire Union had undertaken more than it could accomplish. In 1847 the company obtained a fresh Act of Parliament, this time to authorise a lease of the undertakings of the Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company to the London and North-Western Railway Company. The Act set forth that the capital of the Shropshire Union Company was £482,924, represented by shares on which all the calls had been paid, and that the indebtedness on mortgages, bonds and other securities amounted to £814,207. Under these adverse conditions, "it has been agreed," the Act goes on to say, "between the Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company and the London and North-Western Railway Company, with a view to the economical and convenient working" of the three railways authorised, "that a lease in perpetuity of the undertaking of the Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company should be granted to the London and North-Western Railway Company, and accepted by them, at a rent which shall be equal to ... half the rate per cent. per annum of the dividend which shall from time to time be payable on the capital stock of the London and North-Western Railway Company."
WAREHOUSES AND HYDRAULIC CRANES AT ELLESMERE PORT.
[To face page 48.
We have in this another example of the way in which a railway company has saved a canal system from extinction, while under the control of the London and North-Western the Shropshire Union Canal is still undoubtedly one of the best maintained of any in the country. There may be sections of it, especially in out-lying parts, where the traffic is comparatively small, but a considerable business is still done in the conveyance of sea-borne grain from the Mersey to the Chester district, or in that of tinplates, iron, and manufactured articles from the Black Country to the Mersey for shipment. For traffic such as this the canal already offers every reasonable facility. The Shropshire Union is also a large carrier of goods to and from the Potteries district, in conjunction with the Trent and Mersey. So little has the canal been "strangled," or even neglected, by the London and North-Western Railway Company that, in addition to maintaining its general efficiency, the expenditure incurred by that company of late years for the development of Ellesmere Port—the point where the Shropshire Union Canal enters the Manchester Ship Canal—amounts to several hundred thousand pounds, this money having been spent mainly in the interest of the traffic along the Shropshire Union Canal. Deep-water quay walls of considerable length have been built; warehouses for general merchandise, with an excellent system of hydraulic cranes, have been provided; a large grain depôt, fully equipped with grain elevators and other appliances, has been constructed at a cost of £80,000 to facilitate, more especially, the considerable grain transport by canal that is done between the River Mersey and the Chester district; and at the present time the dock area is being enlarged, chiefly for the purpose of accommodating deeper barges, drawing about 7 feet of water.
Another fact I might mention in regard to the Shropshire Union Canal is in connection with mechanical haulage. Elaborate theories, worked out on paper, as to the difference in cost between rail transport and water transport, may be completely upset where the water transport is to be conducted, not on a river or on a canal crossing a perfectly level plain, but along a canal which is raised, by means of locks, several hundred feet on one side of a ridge, or of some elevated table-land, and must be brought down in the same way on the other side. So, again, the value of what might otherwise be a useful system of mechanical haulage may be completely marred owing to the existence of innumerable locks.
This conclusion is the outcome of a series of practical experiments conducted on the Shropshire Union Canal at a time when the theorists were still working out their calculations on paper. The experiments in question were directed to ascertaining whether economy could be effected by making up strings of narrow canal boats, and having them drawn by a tug worked by steam or other motive power, instead of employing man and horse for each boat. The plan answered admirably until the locks were reached. There the steam-tug was, temporarily, no longer of any service. It was necessary to keep a horse at every lock, or flight of locks, to get the boats through, so that, apart from the tedious delays (the boats that passed first having to wait for the last-comers before the procession could start again), the increased expense at the locks nullified any saving gained from the mechanical haulage.
As a further illustration—drawn this time from Scotland—of the relations of railway companies to canals, I take the case of the Forth and Clyde Navigation, controlled by the Caledonian Railway Company.