Description:One of the many Acts relating to the construction of navigable canals throughout the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century relates to the construction of a railway.
The Act enables the Proprietors of ‘the Navigation from the Trent to the Mersey, to make Railways’ and also ‘to alter the course of the railway from Froghall to Caldon’.
The proposed railway and alterations are intended ‘to render the said Railway and Canal more generally useful and convenient’. The proposals state that railway extensions were to be constructed ‘to Lane End, Hanley, and Burslem, in the said County of Stafford’. It is suggested that the proposed extensions ‘will be of great advantage to the extensive Manufactories of Earthenware established at those places, and be of public utility’.
It is significant that acts relating to the building of railways appear in the collection from the early nineteenth century, perhaps anticipating the nationwide expansion of the railway network in the 1820s. Although it is indicated here that the railway will increase the use and convenience of the canal, the two modes of transportation would find themselves in direct competition by the 1820s.