at that time carried on by means of an inclined plane, upon which the coals were let down in boxes, and re-shipped on the lower level." The original authorising Act had included a causeway (i.e. a hard roadway) from the Townhead Basin to the centre of Glasgow. This detail was not proceeded with. Andrew Stirling initiates progress Returning to 1786, the proprietors of the canal realised that the Blackhill discontinuity had now to be overcome; moreover the best coalfields lay a couple of miles east of Sheepford. An extension east involved locks there with a vertical interval of . The two groups of locks would vastly increase the requirement for water; this was readily available in the River Calder, but the Monkland Canal Act had forbidden the abstraction of any water that might later be claimed by the Forth and Clyde Canal, and that canal was itself considering an extension which would require the water. Andrew Stirling and John Stirling had between them 46 out of 101 shares in the Company, and "Only the Stirlings (and particularly Andrew Stirling) were alive to the commercial possibilities". A way forward was explored, and it emerged that both canals could benefit, if the Monkland took the Calder water and also made a connection to the Forth and Clyde near Townhead; that canal had a branch from its main line to this point to serve local factories. This was at the highest level on the Forth and Clyde Canal, and therefore the entire Forth and Clyde Canal would be fed by the Monkland Canal. This arrangement was ratified by the Monkland proprietors at a General Meeting on 8 January 1787. Nonetheless the canal's finances were difficult: from 1782 to the end of 1789, the company had a gross income of £853 17s 5d and had expended £29,966 5s 3d: a loss of £28,112 7s 10d, and at the end of that period most of the individual shareholders had sold out, so that Andrew Stirling was the owner (personally or through his company) of over two thirds of the Canal. In January 1790 the two canals jointly obtained an Act to make the "cut of junction" physically connecting them. The weak finances of the impoverished Monkland company were reflected in that the Forth and Clyde was to build the new feed from the Calder; it was also empowered to take as much water as it