part of the pool of rolling stock it made available to the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway. From summer 1850 the working was transferred to E B Wilson, of Leeds, until the company took on its own working in November 1851. The K&WR system was leased in perpetuity to the L&CR from 1 May 1858 and Parliamentary ratification took place in the L&CR general powers Act of 13 August 1859 when the L&CR was leased to the LNWR which guaranteed the K&WR shareholders 3 per cent on ordinary shares and 6 per cent on the preference shares. The K&WR company continued as a financial entity until 21 July 1879. Development At first Windermere station stood alone with only the Windermere hotel nearby, but the lake was an attractive destination for visitors and also for residences for the wealthy merchants of Lancashire's industrial towns. The growth of excursion travel and local businesses to support it was phenomenal. On Whit Monday 1883, excursion visitors numbered 8,000 persons. Wealthy merchants were provided with an exclusive club car working in to Windermere on Friday afternoons, but later running each way daily. The vehicle continued in use until 1939. Kendal station was inadequate and the LNWR reconstructed it in 1861 as "a handsome and substantial structure". Decline Although Kendal was an industrial centre, the line could not sustain its importance without the leisure traffic, and that declined in the 1960s. The route was reduced to a single line without a run-round facility at Windermere in 1973, and Joy remarks that: This created the bizarre situation of excursions having to terminate at Oxenholme and disgorge their passengers on to droves of road coaches while the trains were worked empty over the 50 miles to Carlisle for turning and servicing. In 1986 the station site at Windermere was simplified, a supermarket was built on the former goods yard and the station was relocated a short distance from its original position. Opposition Opposition to the line came from people against what they saw as destruction of the Lake District landscape. They included the poet William Wordsworth. His letters to the editor of the Morning Post are reproduced in The Illustrated Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes, P. Bicknell, Ed. (Congdon and Weed, New York, 1984), pp. 186–198. His reactions to the technological and "picturesque" incursions of man on his beloved, wild landscape most famously include the following sonnet: On the