the Keith and Dufftown Railway. It was to be a nine-mile line, with a possible extension to mineral workings in Glenrinnes; capital was proposed to be £50,000; the Bill allowed for the line to be worked by either the GNoSR or the Inverness and Aberdeen Junction Railway. The GNoSR, itself desperately short of money, agreed to subscribe £1,000 to the new company. On that basis the Keith and Dufftown Railway was authorised by Act of 27 July 1857. Most of the route closely followed the River Isla but there were some stiff gradients. The Keith and Dufftown directors had already provisionally arranged that Mitchell, Ireland of Montrose would construct the line for a price of £43,125, of which £7,500 would be in shares. The share subscription did not go well; by the time of the first ordinary general meeting in September, subscriptions and guarantees amounted to only £4,970, and the Great North's £1,000. It was not possible to start construction. In fact so little was subscribed that, after a long hiatus, the construction contract was cancelled. In October 1858 the directors confirmed that, despite the stalemate, they would continue in the hope that something might turn up, ideally a major cash injection by the GNoSR. By October 1859 there was at last some movement: the Duke of Richmond guaranteed £7,500 and the Earl of Fife £5,000, provided that the Great North would take on the undertaking. This the GNSoR agreed to do, provided that half the capital was raised by bona fide local subscriptions. The original construction powers were due to expire on 1 July 1860, and a new Bill had been prepared (by the GNoSR) to obtain an extension of time and to modify the route, at the cost of even steeper gradients. The Bill was enacted as the Keith and Dufftown Railway (Deviation) Act, of 25 May 1860. Competitors' proposals spur action Interests in Inverness were now talking about a new line to Perth from Forres. This was bad news for the GNoSR, as Inverness people and goods would no longer need to travel via Aberdeen if such a line was built. The GNoSR official line on that was that "traffic between stations on the Inverness line and the south is apt to be over-rated". But they betrayed their true feelings by preparing a Bill to extend the Dufftown line 34 miles down the Spey as far as