authorised on 31 August; the latter Act also renamed the company the Dundee and Perth and Aberdeen Railway Junction (DPARJ). The cumbersome title was explained by the fact that the Dundee and Arbroath line had powers to connect to the Arbroath and Forfar line which was being taken over by the Aberdeen Railway: the lease would connect Perth and Dundee with the Aberdeen Railway. At the end of December 1848 work had begun on the temporary station at Princes Street; there was pressure now from the SCR to connect to their joint station, but the D&PR said that "the Perth branch" had already cost much more than they had expected, and they could not afford to proceed immediately with the extension from Princes Street to the joint station. On 16 February 1849 Captain Simmons of the Board of Trade inspected the Tay bridge; it was constructed of laminated timber arches with an opening swing bridge section. Although he remarked that the bridge deflected excessively under load, the section of line opened on 1 March 1849. There continued to be wrangling over the connecting line, and part of the problem was the levels of the approaching line compared with the SCR line. However, this was eventually resolved and the D&PR finally reached the SCR; the trains passed the joint station southwards past the point of junction, and then reversed into the station. An attempted lease by the Caledonian Now the Caledonian Railway announced that it had concluded an agreement to lease the DPARJ at 8% of its capital cost. At this time the Caledonian was undergoing a crisis, as it had been making lease agreements with many different line; the lease agreements required no cash down, but represented a heavy ongoing drain on profits later, and shareholders were angered by the DPARJ and other leases. In February 1849 the Caledonian announced that it was not proceeding with the lease. The DPARJ demanded the lease payment for the period until then, but the Caledonian simply refused, saying it had never been acted upon, and in any case it had had no power to make the lease agreement: it was ultra vires. This meant that the proposed line linking the D&AR and the Perth line was not built, and the only link was the horse tramway running through the streets, belonging to the Harbour Commissioners. The Inchture tramway A branch was built from