The Company undertook some extraordinary commitments at this time. It arranged to purchase the Stamford and Spalding Railway; this would form a loop from north of Peterborough back on to the GNR Loop Line near Crowland; and leases at 6% of the Royston and Hitchin Railway, the East Lincolnshire Railway (Boston to Great Grimsby; both authorised, but neither yet built) and the Boston, Stamford and Birmingham Railway (never built). It also took about a third-of-a-million-pounds-worth of shares in the South Yorkshire Railway.