magazine. The River Thames is tidal at the point where the canal joined it, so the canal was also tidal up to the lock near Kensington. The tidal flow brought silt into the canal and the feed from Counter's Creek was inadequate to clear it, so that problems were soon experienced with obstruction to the passage of vessels. More seriously, the times of day when vessels could navigate the canal were extremely short and constantly changing. Rescued by a railway The proprietors of the canal had had ideas of extending it further north to join the Grand Junction Canal, but the cost of building the original section hugely exceeded the anticipated cost, and extension was out of the question. In the mid-1830s railways were being projected, in particular the London and Birmingham Railway and the Great Western Railway; both of these lines were to pass a little to the north of Kensington (at Willesden) and their London terminals were to be on the north-west fringe of London. Attention was given to gaining access for goods and minerals to and from the London docks, and proposals were developed for a railway branch to the canal; trans-shipping there to or from river lighters would give the desired connection. A railway company was floated, called the Bristol, Birmingham and Thames Junction Railway, and when it was incorporated in 1836 it purchased the canal. The purchase price was £36,000, of which £10,000 was to be paid in cash and the remainder in shares in the new company. The grandiose name of the railway was altered to the "West London Railway", and it built a short railway line from Willesden, joining with the main line railways there, to the canal basin. The railway line was leased to the London and Birmingham Railway in 1846, but it continued to own the canal; the Kensington Canal Company was wound up in the same year. The railway and canal combination was utterly unsuccessful, and the hoped-for traffic, involving trans-shipment at Kensington, never appeared. The main line railways—the Great Western and the London and North Western Railway (as successor to the London and Birmingham Railway) – needed a rail connection to lines south of the Thames, and in 1859 an authorising Act of Parliament gave authority to a joint venture of several railway companies to extend the railway south from Kensington, converting the canal to a railway. At the