their Act of Parliament. The canal company suggested that the railway could lease the canal at £2 per share per year. The railway company responded with an alternative plan, which would see them buying the canal within five years for £2.50 per share, and paying off some of the canal's debts. This was rejected by the shareholders, who authorised the committee to negotiate with other railways, or to seek the required powers to build their own railway. By June 1846 the company had negotiated an alternative arrangement with the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway. Under the terms of this agreement, the railway company took out a perpetual lease of the canal at an annual rent of £6,605, which amounted to £2.50 per share, and was broadly equivalent to the dividend paid by the canal company prior to 1840. They also made a payment of £60,000, to cover all outstanding debts of the canal company. A bill to authorise the takeover of both the Macclesfield Canal and the Peak Forest Canal was sought and obtained in late 1846. The final meeting of the canal company took place on 15 July 1847, although it remained as a legal entity until 1883, to manage the rents. The railway company began selling water from the canal as soon as it took over. Ownership At the time it took out its lease, the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway was itself at an advanced stage in negotiating a merger with other railway companies, and on 1 January 1847, ownership of the canal passed to the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway. With an expectation that they would complete the construction of their London extension in 1899, the company changed its name to the Great Central Railway in 1897. When most of the railways of Britain were amalgamated in 1922, under the provisions of the Railways Act 1921, known as "the grouping", the Great Central Railway and hence the canal passed into the ownership of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). In 1848, the carriage of goods earned the company £9,049. The railway company began operating as a carrier soon afterwards, on a fairly small scale, and this continued until 1894, by which time most of the trade was in cotton. Trade in the return direction dwindled, to the point where the operation was uneconomic, and ceased. In 1905, boats using the canal carried coal, raw cotton,