The Committees
A four man committee made its first report in August, 1884 when it estimated the cost of the 2,863-yard (2,618 m) line at £12,000 giving an annual saving of £1,050 over road haulage but this assumed that the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and London and North Western Railway – joint owners of the Longridge branch line – would work the service. They refused, but did grant junction facilities at Grimsargh.
Strong opposition from local land owners and a lack of support from the hospital's own Finance & General Committee stalled the project. Further revision of the cost brought the estimated price down to £9,000 but the project still could not gain sufficient support to proceed. Refusing to admit defeat, the committee obtained a hearing before the more senior General Committee who approved and the matter was placed before the Annual Session at Preston in 1885. Success was followed by the presentation of a Bill to Parliament that year at an initial cost of £550.
Read more about this topic: Whittingham Hospital Railway
Famous quotes containing the word committees:
“What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.”
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)