were reported to be 'greatly improved' by the fitting of steel axles and wheel tyres: the M&CR is thought to have been the first UK company to do this. By 1860 the dividend was 6.5% a year, and M&C shares were selling above par; by 1864 the dividend was 10% a year. Expansion The M&CR undertook two extensions to their network, both essentially defensive: The Bolton loop In 1861 the Carlisle and Silloth Bay Railway, wished to expand into the coalfield around Mealsgate and promoted a line from their Abbey station. Nothing came of the scheme, but the Maryport and Carlisle Railway was spurred to provide a connection from its own main line. It formed a loop (through the parish of Boltons) from Aspatria through Mealsgate back to the main line at Aikbank Junction. Mealsgate was reached over sustained gradients of 1 in 70 from Aspatria, 1 in 60 from Aikbank. The line opened to goods and mineral traffic on 2 April 1866, but the collieries did not develop as rapidly as had been expected, and the Aikbank end of the loop quickly became disused; track was removed in September 1869. Eventually the coal production picked up and on 1 October 1877 the Aikbank end of the line was reinstated and re-opened. Passenger traffic from Aspatria to Mealsgate began 26 December 1866; the intermediate station of Baggrow led to the name the Baggra Bus being given to the branch passenger train. On the reopening of the Aikbank end of the loop, a single daily mixed train ran on that also. The Derwent branch By the 1860s West Cumberland was producing huge quantities of coal, and (south of the area through which the M&CR ran) of good quality haematite iron ore, free of phosphorus and hence of a composition particularly suitable for the Bessemer process of steel making. An M&C shareholders' meeting in 1864 was told that 660,000 tons of ore had been mined in 1863, about a quarter of this going to Scotland by rail or by sea. Ironworks set up to smelt the ore locally found West Cumberland coal unsuitable, and better quality coal (or coke) had to be imported. The profits of the incumbent railways were correspondingly excellent; the M&CR over which much of the export of haematite to Scotland took place was paying dividends of 13% in 1873. Larger railway networks from outside the area started to