The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was to be followed rapidly by other lines. George Stephenson was a good man of business as well as a good engineer. He suggested a number of lucrative opportunities to his Liverpool friends, and he took a financial share in some of them himself. He thought there should be a line between Swannington and Leicester, in order to increase the coal supply of the latter town, which was quite a manufacturing centre. A company was formed, and his son Robert was appointed engineer. In the course of the work Robert learned that an estate near the road was to be sold, and decided that there was considerable coal there. George Stephenson and two other friends bought the place, and he took up his residence there, at Alton Grange, in order to supervise the mining operations. The mine was very successful, and the railroad proved of the greatest value to the people of Leicester. Stephenson now changed his position from that of an employee of coal-owners to that of employer of many miners himself. The first railroads to be built were principally branches of the Liverpool and Manchester one, and chiefly located in the mining and manufacturing county of Lancaster. But before long the great metropolis of London required railroad communication with the Midlands, and the London and Birmingham road was projected. Here again the promoters had to overcome gigantic obstacles, the opposition of the great landed proprietors who owned vast estates in the neighborhood of London, the opposition of the old posting companies, and of the conservative element who were afraid of the great changes such a method of transportation would bring about. The natural difficulties of the first lines were increased a hundredfold, greater marshes had to be crossed, greater streams to be bridged, greater hills to be tunneled. But the greater the obstacles the greater Stephenson’s resources proved. When some of his tunnels were flooded, because the workmen had cut into an unexpected bed of quicksand, he immediately designed and built a vast system of powerful pumps, and drew off enough water to fill the Thames from London Bridge to Woolwich, so that his workmen might continue the tunnels and line them with masonry sufficiently solid to withstand any future inrush of water. The men who were back of this railroad would very probably never have projected it had they realized that the building of it would cost five million pounds. But when the road was opened for use the excess in traffic beyond the estimates was much greater than the excess in cost had been. The company was able to pay large dividends, and the builders found that they could have made no better investment. This London and Birmingham road, 112 miles long, was opened September 17, 1838. The receipts from passenger traffic alone for the first year were £608,564. Evidently travel by coach had not been as popular in reality as the conservatives had ardently maintained.