THE railway mania of 1845 of course did not leave Worcestershire uninfected. No fewer than twenty-seven schemes, having more or less reference to this county, were advertised in the Worcester papers, with long statements of imaginary advantages and abundance of “provisional directors.” The Welsh Midland; Worcester, Tenbury, and Ludlow; Worcester, Warwick, and Rugby; and Worcester, Hereford, Ross, and Gloucester, were those which found most favour with the Worcester public. A great number of meetings were held in reference to them all over the county, and every scheme was enthusiastically received everywhere; it is quite useless, however, to allude to them further, as, without a single exception, they were utterly resultless, excepting in abstracting money from the pockets of people who could ill afford to lose it. The 30th November was at Worcester, as at all other places, a day of great excitement—the promoters of the various schemes which had just started into existence having, before twelve o’clock on that night (Sunday), to deposit their plans and sections with the clerks of the peace. Plans for no less than thirty-six railways were deposited at the office of the Clerk of the Peace for this county, {156} and thirteen with the Clerk of the Peace for the city. The early part of the year 1846 was occupied with “amalgamations” and “arrangements;” then came the ordeal of standing orders, and very few survived that. In some instances ingenious engineers had made rivers run up-hill, and canals swim over bridges, instead of allowing the bridges to bestride the canals; while in many cases the most trivial error of misdescription or omission to serve a notice was sufficient to extinguish a scheme of real utility. Then ensued the panic and “winding up”—very few of the scripholders ever obtaining any return out of their deposits. Only six of all the projects connected with Worcestershire received the sanction of the legislature, and only three of the rest were resuscitated in the coming season; these were the Shropshire Union (Shrewsbury to Worcester), the Worcester and Hereford (Midland Company’s project), and the Worcester, Tenbury, and Ludlow. The last mentioned, however, seemed only to have been continued for speculating purposes, and was speedily withdrawn. The Worcester and Hereford line was warmly supported by the citizens of Worcester in a public meeting held in February, 1847, but it was thrown out on standing orders; and the Shropshire Union was also abandoned. OXFORD, WORCESTER, AND WOLVERHAMPTON. THE first meeting at Worcester with reference to railway communication between that city and the metropolis, _viâ_ Oxford, was as follows: