Within one week in 1899, 677 traders, merchants and industrialists of Ayr, dissatisfied with the poor service of the G&SWR monopoly, petitioned the Caledonian to extend the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire line to Ayr. The Caledonian did not immediately respond, and the Provost, Town Clerk and a deputation of magistrates went to the Caledonian headquarters and presented a written guarantee of half the traffic of 560 traders for ten years if the Caledonian would construct the line. The Caledonian seriously examined the scheme; a branch off the proposed line to Troon was considered. The (as yet unfinished) Irvine branch would be doubled and the length of the route from Glasgow would be almost identical to the G&SWR's route. Such a line would have been a coup in the battle against the rival G&SWR, but a more balanced view prevailed: the line would have cost £440,000 and would have been subject to an immediate price war, frustrating any likelihood of great profits and the construction would have exhausted the Caledonian's fund of capital for major works, for which the priority lay elsewhere.