22 to 24 October 1849 from the same cause. Direct London and Portsmouth Railway The Direct London and Portsmouth Railway line was authorised on 26 June 1846, to run from Epsom via Godalming to a Portsmouth terminus. For a time this seemed to be a future Portsmouth main line, but in 1847 it submitted a further Bill proposing to sell its line to the LBSCR. By this time Parliament had become hostile to railway schemes floated simply to sell on to existing lines, and the Bill was thrown out. This had the immediate effect of killing off the Direct London and Portsmouth company. Portsmouth Railway The future Portsmouth Direct Line was now in place from Woking to Godalming, and from Havant to Portsmouth & Southsea station. In 1852 the Portsmouth Railway was promoted, advancing a similar route to the Direct Portsmouth Railway, and hoping to adopt its assets; the "Direct" company was wound up by Act of 31 July 1854. The Portsmouth Railway got its authorising Act on 8 July 1853, for a mile route from Godalming (LSWR, at a junction just north of the original terminus) to Havant (LBSCR, on the line from Chichester to Portsmouth). The LSWR and the LBSCR both opposed the scheme in Parliament. Authorised share capital was £400,000. The contractor Thomas Brassey undertook the construction. The line would make London to Portsmouth a distance of 73 miles; Waterloo—Bishopstoke—Portsmouth was miles. (Waterloo to Gosport was about 86 miles, and London Bridge—Brighton—Portsmouth was .) Meanwhile the Portsmouth Railway Directors considered how it could make a connection to an existing railway's network. The LSWR and LBSCR hostility was obvious, but the South Eastern Railway (SER) had a line not far away, just south of Guildford at Shalford; perhaps a connection to their line, and thence to London via Redhill, would be feasible. On 24 July 1854 the Company got authorisation to extend northwards from Godalming to join the SER, a new line running broadly parallel to the LSWR line, and building a new south-to-east curve to join the SER. This would have been an extremely long route to London, and in any case it was defeated when negotiations with the SER and the LBSCR for traffic running over their lines failed. It appears that the SER board had an anti-expansion policy at the time. In 1857 the Portsmouth Railway agreed with the LSWR on access to the LSWR