envisaging horse and cart haulage to the city, but it was not built. In 1786 when the completion of the canal was being proposed, the idea was repeated; however it was never carried out. Although the Townhead basin served much heavy industry in that quarter of Glasgow, progressive improvements to the navigability of the River Clyde meant that 100-tonne (110-short-ton) ships, and by the early years of the nineteenth century 400-tonne (440-short-ton) ships, could reach the Broomielaw quays from the sea. The conveyance of coal, iron ore and machinery from the canal down to the quays resulted in a huge and inconvenient cartage traffic through the city streets; this "added a cost equivalent to carriage on a railway", and of course involved a trans-shipment. The engineer Rennie designed a canal link from the Monkland Canal to the Clyde in 1797, but it involved vertical interval of lockage and was impossibly expensive; Stevenson prepared a similar scheme later but it too foundered. The Canal Company bought land for a connecting railway for the purpose in 1824, but that scheme also came to nothing. Decline Although the trading position was buoyant in the mid-1840s, as railways developed and improved their own services, the canal lost traffic heavily as the years passed. Thomson says that the Blackhill inclined plane was only used for about 37 years (i.e. until about 1831) but this is completely inconsistent with traffic volumes, and Hutton's statement that it worked until 1887 is more convincing. From that time the declining traffic volume did not require the continued use of the inclined plane, and after standing idle for some years it was finally scrapped. In 1867 the Caledonian Railway purchased the Forth and Clyde Canal in order to get possession of the harbour at Grangemouth, and by this purchase they acquired the Monkland Canal as well. The purchase guaranteed 6¼ per cent per annum on the capital of £1.14 million. Traffic declined steadily, from 1,530 thousand tonnes in 1863 to 586 thousand tonnes in 1888, 108 thousand tonnes in 1903 and 30 thousand tonnes in 1921. Abandonment In August 1942, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway as successors to the Caledonian Railway, applied to the Ministry of War Transport for an order authorising the abandonment of the canal. Navigation rights were removed by an Act of Parliament passed in 1952. The Sheepford locks were demolished in 1962. The canal remained