[9] The MS&LR soon ran short of money, and a loan of £250,000 had to be negotiated; deliveries of locomotives were slowed, as were certain infrastructure improvements; the stations at Dog Lane, Hazlehead, Oxspring and Thurgoland were closed to passenger traffic as from 1 November 1847.

The MS&LR directors saw that it was no longer practicable to control their company's day-to-day activities from the board, and the decided to appoint a general manager.

c. cxiv), permitted the GNR to run over the MS&LR to cross the River Trent at Gainsborough, and also to enter the eastern end of the Great Northern Railway station at Lincoln by means of a spur from Durham Ox Junction, on the line from Market Rasen.

He manipulated Allport and the MS&LR into joining a traffic agreement that contained clauses hostile to any collaboration with the GNR; this was approved on 16 January 1850.

[30] At the end of May 1851 a contract was concluded with the Electric Telegraph Company which, for about £5 per mile per annum, undertook to install lines between Manchester, Sheffield, New Holland, Grimsby and Lincoln, providing not only the equipment but the clerks to operate it at the principal stations.

In July 1851 through carriages by three trains a day were introduced between Sheffield (Bridgehouses) and London (Euston Square) via Beighton, Eckington, the Midland Railway, and the LNWR.

[32][26] The second bore of the Woodhead tunnel opened for traffic on 2 February 1852;[33] its beneficial effect on train operating was felt immediately, and the removal of the pilot engine alone saved £800 a year.

A shareholders' consultative committee had been set up and was require to be involved in strategic decisions of the company; it appears that Allport considered this to be an infringement of his role.

[37] He had been the assistant of Huish at the LNWR and he revealed that the latter, in spite of the Euston Square agreement, had been negotiating with the GNR for a territorial division between the two companies, to the detriment of the MS&LR.

Throughout the process, Huish had been pursuing personal antagonistic objectives, and had steadily lost the confidence of his own board, and on 11 September 1858 his resignation was accepted.

[48] A further extension looked advantageous, and this was conceived as a nominally independent company, the Marple, New Mills and Hayfield Junction Railway (MNM&HJR).

[52][6] By the end of March 1860 the line had been finished between Guide Bridge and the junction with the L&YR near Ashton-under-Lyne, but unusually wet weather delayed the completion of the remainder.

Yet the LNWR could set London passengers and goods down in the centre of Liverpool, and the gap from Garston made the MS&LR and GNR service unattractive.

[67] Meanwhile, the LNWR had leased the St Helens Railway from 1860, and absorbed it in 1864, as part of its own plan for an improved route from Liverpool to the south, avoiding the detour via Newton le Willows.

Negotiations for land acquisition in the prime districts of Liverpool were protracted, and took until 1869, and the first construction contract was not awarded until July 1870, six years after authorisation, and the "daunting" task began.

This, which was later approved as the Sheffield and Midland Railway Companies' Committee, threatened to cause a schism with the GNR, who saw this as bad faith regarding their co-operative agreement with the MS&LR.

Handsome composites built by the Lancaster Carriage & Wagon Company had first class compartments lined in mahogany and upholstered with green or brown velvet, whilst the exceptionally fine coaches supplied by Great Central workshops (in 1914) featured first class accommodation finished in walnut and sycamore with fittings of oxidised copper and deep blue cloth seats.

[50][49][82] The South Yorkshire Railway (SYR) had established a small network primarily oriented to mineral traffic, opened from Doncaster to Swinton in 1849, and to Barnsley in 1851.

The MS&LR was to connect from Barnsley on to the Midland main line by means of a new branch to Cudworth, and then continue northwards to the West Riding & Grimsby Railway near Oakenshaw.

[92][93][94][66] In 1866 authorisation was given for a slight change to the point of junction at Old Trafford, and for a loop line to give a Warrington station in the town; the original plan was a straight route some distance out on the north side.

This sanctioned an eleven-mile branch from Hunt's Cross on the main line to a terminus at Sandhills and a two and a quarter-mile connection from Fazakerley to the L&YR at Aintree.

of 5 August 1873, to build from the CLC Liverpool Extension Railway at Throstle Nest Junction (east of Trafford Park Station) via Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and Didsbury to Alderley.

It was slow to make progress and the Midland withdrew its financial support; the MS&LR ensured that the line was solvent, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the LNWR.

It opened from Glazebrook to Strangeways Hall Colliery, immediately west of Hindley, 16 October 1879; the MS&LR working the goods and mineral traffic.

The MS&LR agreed to build from the WM&CQR at Hawarden, on the south side of the Dee, crossing the river and swinging east to run to Chester.

The WM&CQR relied on heavy financial support from the MS&LR, which had acquired a majority share holding in the Wrexham company.

The means of achieving this were not obvious, but on 26 July 1889 parliamentary permission was obtained for a line from Beighton, where the MS&LR crossed the Midland Railway, to Annesley, and a branch to Chesterfield.

Dow says: "To his successors Watkin left the well-nigh impossible task of making pay a line which Sir John Clapham, a contemporary economic historian, described as 'a belated, and almost entirely superfluous, product of the original era of fighting construction'.

"[112] The MS&LR went ahead on its own, and after a false start obtained royal assent in the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway Act 1893 (56 & 57 Vict.

Once it became railway property, the MS&LR increased the facilities by starting to construct a New Dock covering 25 acres (10 ha) in 1846; it was opened on 18 April 1852.