During the decades the Birmingham Canal has been in existence important works of all kinds have been built alongside its banks, not only in and around Birmingham itself, but all through the Black Country. There are parts of the canal where almost continuous lines of such works on each side of the canal, flush up to the banks or towing path, are to be seen for miles together. Any general widening, therefore, even of the main waterways, would involve such a buying up, reconstruction of, or interference with extremely valuable properties that the expenditure involved--in the interests of a problematical saving in canal tolls--would be alike prodigious and prohibitive. There is the less reason for incurring such expenditure when we consider the special purposes which the canals of the district already serve, and, I may even say, efficiently serve. The total traffic passing over the Birmingham Canal system amounts to about 8,000,000 tons per annum,[7] and of this a considerable proportion is collected for eventual transport by rail. Every few miles along the canal in the Black Country there is a "railway-basin" put in either by the London and North-Western Railway Company, who have had the privilege of finding the money to keep the canal going since 1874, or by the Great Western or the Midland Railway Companies. Here, again, very considerable expenditure has been incurred by the railway companies in the provision alike of wharves, cranes, sheds, etc., and of branch railways connecting with the main lines of the company concerned. From these railway-basins narrow boats are sent out to works all over the district to collect iron, hardware, tinplates, bricks, tiles, manufactured articles, and general merchandise, and bring them in for loading into the railway trucks alongside. So complete is the network of canals, with their hundreds of small "special" branches, that for many of the local works their only means of communication with the railway is by water, and the consignments are simply conveyed to the railway by canal boat, instead of, as elsewhere, by collecting van or road lorry. The number of these railway-basins--the cost of which is distinctly substantial--is constantly being increased, for the traffic through them grows almost from day to day. The Great Western Railway Company, for example, have already several large transhipping basins on the canals of the Black Country. They have one at Wolverhampton, and another at Tipton, only 5 miles away; yet they have now decided to construct still another, about half-way between the two. The matter is thus referred to in the _Great Western Railway Magazine_ for March, 1906:--