would purchase the Gloucester companies, and offered to raise and spend 6% on their (own) capital of £1.8 million if discussions with the GWR were inconclusive. The GWR declined to increase their offer, and the Gloucester companies turned back to Ellis. The company granted the Midland's solicitor Samual Carter a perpetual lease giving the right to purchase. The matter was ratified in Parliament in the 1846 session, and on 3 August 1846 the amalgamation Bill was passed. The London and North Western Railway was as anxious to keep the broad gauge away from Birmingham as was the Midland Railway, and it undertook to share any loss the MR might make by the acquisition; this was later commuted into permission to use the LNWR New Street station (built later) in Birmingham for a nominal rental of £100 per annum. The corporate buyout, dragged out the break of gauge at Gloucester. The disruption caused by the process of transferring goods from narrow (standard) gauge wagons to broad gauge influenced the Gauge Commission, who at the time were deliberating on recommendations to Parliament about the standardisation of the gauge in Great Britain. Of more immediate concern, the Midland Railway obtained authorisation by Act of 14 August 1848 to lay an independent narrow gauge track between Gloucester and Standish Junction (where the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway diverged), and to mix the gauge between Standish and Bristol. They ran their first narrow gauge train throughout on 29 May 1854. Further Norris locomotives were purchased, but they were crudely constructed and early replacement of fireboxes proved to be necessary. From February 1842 several were progressively converted to tank engines. Worcester The Birmingham and Gloucester Railway had, from the outset, implied a willingness to serve Worcester to respond to an outcry from the city over being bypassed. MPs and Peers objected to such a branch who had interests in or lobbying from its canals, the stagecoach sector and rival railways so that the early authorising Acts left such plans out. The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway had been authorised on 4 August 1845; it was to be a broad gauge line, allied to the Great Western Railway. A national financial recession resulted in waylaid construction. Meanwhile, the Midland Railway was anxious to reach Worcester, and the two companies reached an agreement to lay narrow (standard) gauge track between a junction at Abbots Wood (Abbotswood) (on