the railway to follow the sharply-curved course of the original canal. Completion was swift, despite a break in construction when a contractor had financial problems. It opened on 20 July 1874. There were four passenger trains each way every day; two of them carried through coaches from Birmingham to Bournemouth. Intermediate stations were at Wellow, Radstock, Chilcompton, Binegar, Masbury, Shepton Mallet and Evercreech New. The original Evercreech station was renamed Evercreech Junction. Financial exhaustion and lease The completion of the line to Bath brought a further massive traffic increase, but the financial burden of the loans taken to build the Bath extension weighed the little company down even more, and it soon became clear that even day-to-day operating expenses could not be met. Atthill describes the Bath extension project as an act of financial suicide. The company realised that the game was up, and sought purchasers. The GWR and the B&ER were obvious candidates, but in August 1875 a 999-year lease was abruptly agreed jointly to the Midland Railway and the LSWR (the two railways whose networks it joined at either end), and this was confirmed by Act of Parliament on 13 July 1876. The purchase price was generous, being calculated by the Midland and LSWR as much to exclude the GWR and B&ER from Bournemouth as anything else, and the rental income enabled the S&DR company to pay its shareholders %, a considerable income in those years of very low inflation. The railway route was now the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway. The Joint Committee With the lease to two very powerful companies, the operation of the Joint Line (as it was now called) would no longer be hampered by shortage of money. The Midland Railway and the LSWR set up a joint committee, and divided up responsibilities so that the Midland was in charge of motive power, and the LSWR provided the infrastructure and rolling stock. The serious accident at Foxcote, near Radstock took place on 7 August 1876, within a month of the formal takeover of responsibilities, and must have brought home to the parent companies the urgency of their intervening to bring things into good order. Operation of the complex stretches of single line had been done by Absolute Block working, but without any form of physical train staff (supplemented by telegraphic train orders issued from an office at Glastonbury), so the LSWR set about replacing