Glasgow to Carlisle. Other Scottish trunk railways were authorised in the same year, and this encouraged the promotion of increasingly wild schemes intended to be submitted to Parliament in the following session. The West Highlands of Scotland were not omitted from the schemes proposed. Prospectuses were issued for the Scottish Western Railway and the Scottish North Western Railway, as well as the Scottish Grand Junction Railway and others. Some of the prospectuses told of abundant income and easy construction through imaginary gently rolling land. One line at least admitted the mountainous character of the area but proposed the use of the atmospheric system to overcome the difficulty. The tightness of money in 1846 and the following years put paid to all the West Highland schemes. As other railways were opened and operating, there remained a large area on the map of Scotland not served by any, and branch lines from existing trunk lines began to be considered. In 1870 the first section of the Callander and Oban Railway was opened, extending a local branch line, and this railway, a subsidiary of the Caledonian Railway, opened throughout to Oban in 1880. Also in 1870 the main part of the Dingwall and Skye Railway opened, as far as Stromeferry. Thus two west coast locations were reached by penetrating branches from the centre. The Glasgow and North Western Railway There remained considerable tracts of the west Highland area without useful transport routes, and social conditions were identified as being unacceptable. A government commission appointed in March 1883, examined the plight of smallholders in the Highlands, and their investigation showed that above all transport was a pressing need. The Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 established the Crofters' Commission and gave enhanced rights to crofters. This change of mood led to the idea that a railway serving the area was a social need, and in turn this led to the promotion of the Glasgow and North Western Railway. This 167-mile line, costed at £1,526,116, was to reach from Glasgow (Maryhill) to Inverness by way of Loch Lomond, Rannoch Moor, Glen Coe and Fort William. Fort William, although a small town, was the centre of a wide area. The G&NWR was not directly established by the government: it was sponsored by financial interests in London, and by the North British Railway (NBR). The NBR was a bitter competitor of the Caledonian Railway (CR) and the CR