from Huddersfield to Wakefield reverted to three times a week. At the time, the construction of the broad Rochdale Canal was making progress towards Sowerby Bridge, while the Huddersfield Narrow Canal was struggling with the excavation of Standedge Tunnel, the longest, deepest and highest on the English canal system. The Rochdale Canal provided a trans-Pennine route from 1804, and Sowerby Bridge remained more important than Huddersfield, even after the Huddersfield Narrow opened throughout in 1811. The Huddersfield Narrow Canal provided a heavily-locked western connection to the wool-weaving towns of the upper Colne valley, (Golcar, Linthwaite, Slaithwaite, and Marsden) and across the Pennines to Saddleworth, Stalybridge and Manchester via Standedge Tunnel. It was never particularly successful, and Ramsden's Canal was seen almost as a branch of the Calder and Hebble, with links to Yorkshire, rather than Lancashire. The Calder and Hebble brought prosperity to the area, and Ramsden's Canal shared in it. The Narrow Canal was hampered by the need to tranship cargoes at Huddersfield. Their boats were , the same as those on the connecting Ashton Canal and Peak Forest Canal at the Manchester end. However, they were too long to fit through the shorter locks of Ramsden's Canal and the Calder and Hebble. In 1812 they built a narrowboat, which could work through to Wakefield, but it carried a smaller cargo. The company tried unsuccessfully to get the Calder and Hebble to entend their locks to cater for longer boats. Had they succeeded, locks on Ramsden's Canal would have needed lengthening. Railway ownership The canal passed into railway ownership in 1845 when it was bought by the Huddersfield and Manchester Railway and Canal Company for £46,560. The company was incorporated in 1845 and had already the Huddersfield Narrow Canal primarily to aid in the construction of a cross-Pennine rail link at Standedge. The railway company became part of the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) in 1847, and the negotiations meant that shareholders received 70 per cent of the dividends paid on shares in the LNWR. In the year of the LNWR takeover, the canal carried 120,207 tons of cargo, but this gradually declined. An attempted revival of trade to Manchester in 1856, spearheaded by the Aire and Calder Navigation after a railway company took over the Rochdale Canal, foundered when the LNWR created obstacles to using Standedge Tunnel. The Aire and Calder negotiated the expansion of Huddersfield Wharf