On the 31st March, 1836, a public meeting was called to consider the expediency of further opposing the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway Company. The directors of that company had bound themselves in a penalty of £70,000 to make a branch to Worcester, to join there the Grand Connection Railway to Wolverhampton, and on that score the opposition to their bill, on the part of the citizens of Worcester, had been withdrawn, and it had passed through committee in the Commons. Mr. Waters, who had been chiefly instrumental in calling the present meeting, said that he thought Worcester ought to join Tewkesbury in opposing the measure in the House of Lords. Mr. Pierpoint said the sum subscribed after the former meeting had been totally inadequate for the purpose of opposing the bill, and so they had to make the best terms they could—which were, that the Railway Company should make a deviation line from Abbott’s Wood to Oddingley, or forfeit £70,000. Mr. Pierpoint represented this as altogether distinct and separate from the Grand Connection Railway, although, he said, he would put the bond on the fire that night if the opposition were determined on. The Mayor asked him how he could do that if the bond were given him on behalf of the city, and he replied that he had been well advised upon the point. A great deal of personal altercation took place, and hot party feeling introduced, but the meeting ended by Mr. Pierpoint proposing the following resolution: “That in consequence of certain satisfactory arrangements having been entered into between the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway Company and the Grand Connection Railway committee, the interests of this city have been so consulted that this meeting think it unnecessary to interfere.” Mr. Waters, in a few days afterwards, published a letter in answer to “A Grand Connection Shareholder,” in which he declared Mr. Pierpoint to have been proved, by this very letter of his brother shareholder, to have deceived the whole body of his fellow citizens; inasmuch as there was only an agreement between the Birmingham and Gloucester Company and Grand Connection Company to carry out the deviation line between them; or if the Grand Connection Company did not obtain their act, then the Birmingham and Gloucester line were to make a branch from Worcester to Abbott’s Wood.