‘The committee-room was crowded with landowners and others interested in the success or defeat of the Bill, and eager to hear Brunel’s evidence. His knowledge of the country surveyed by him was marvellously great, and the explanations he gave of his plans, and the answers he returned to questions suggested by Dr. Lardner, showed a profound acquaintance with the principles of mechanics. He was rapid in thought, clear in his language, and never said too much, or lost his presence of mind. I do not remember ever having enjoyed so great an intellectual treat as that of listening to Brunel’s examination, and I was told at the time that George Stephenson and many others were much struck by the ability and knowledge shown by him.’
In his evidence, Mr. George Stephenson stated that he did not know any existing line so good as that proposed by Mr. Brunel. ‘I can imagine (he said) a better line, but I do not know of one so good.’[42]
At length, on the fifty-fourth day of the sittings of the committee, Mr. Harrison, K.C., rose to reply on behalf of the promoters, and on the conclusion of his address the Bill was passed.
In the House of Lords the second reading was moved by Lord Wharncliffe. It was opposed, and on a division being taken, the motion was lost by a majority of seventeen (30 content and 47 non-content). The Bill was therefore thrown out.
The directors, undaunted by their defeat, lost no time in making preparations for bringing a Bill before Parliament in the session of 1835, with such improvements as the experience of the past campaign suggested to them. Taking into consideration the various grounds on which opposition had been raised to the plans they had proposed for entering London through the Brompton district, they opened negotiations with the London and Birmingham Railway Company, and arrangements were concluded by which the traffic of the Great Western Railway was to be carried upon the London and Birmingham line for the first four miles out of London, the junction being made a little to the west of the Kensal Green Cemetery.
They had also during the autumn raised money enough to enable them to apply to Parliament for powers to construct the whole of the line from London to Bristol. They thus escaped all the sarcastic observations which had been made upon the scheme of 1834, of which it had been said, that it would be a head and a tail without a body, and neither ‘Great’ nor ‘Western,’ nor even a ‘railway’ at all, but ‘a gross deception, a trick, and a fraud upon the public, in name, in title, and in substance!’
On March 9, the earliest day allowed by the standing orders, the Bill was read a second time and committed. A division being taken on the motion for committal, there appeared in favour of the motion 160, and against it none but the tellers.
Shortly after its first meeting, the committee, of which Mr. Charles Russell, then member for Reading, was chairman, came to the resolution that, inasmuch as the evidence given in the previous year as to the public advantages of a Bristol railway had been referred to them by order of the House, they needed no further evidence on that subject. Counsel were therefore directed to confine their case as much as possible to the merits of the line proposed.
Evidence was called by the opponents chiefly with a view to show the advantages of a proposed line from Basing to Bath, and the inexpediency of granting an entirely new line of 115 miles in length to the Great Western Railway Company, which involved the construction of a ‘monstrous and extraordinary,’ ‘most dangerous and impracticable, tunnel’ at Box, and this, when 44 miles of railway in a western direction—viz. as far as Basingstoke, had already been sanctioned by the legislature in the Southampton Railway Act, passed in the previous session. The promoters of the Bill contended that the levels of the Basing and Bath line were not so good as those proposed for their own, and that the Great Western Railway would approach almost every town of importance situated on the proposed Basing and Bath line, by means of short branches; whilst at the same time it presented the great advantage of being capable of easy extension to Gloucester and Wales, and to Oxford, an object wholly unattainable by the other line. In reply to these assertions, the opponents maintained that although the levels of the Basing and Bath Railway presented greater inclinations than those of the Great Western, yet that they were so balanced as that the rises and falls compensated one for another, so as to render the line practically level. The enunciation of this theory called forth a remark by the chairman that according to this principle the Highlands of Scotland would be as good as any other place for the construction of a railway.
The preamble was voted proved, and the Bill passed the House of Commons without further opposition, and on May 27 was read a first time in the Lords. On June 10, the second reading was carried after a sharp debate, the numbers being 46 contents, and 34 non-contents.