Competition in the form of railways started to affect the canal from the 1840s. The canal company initially welcomed some of the schemes, but the Don Navigation Company proposed to lease the canal for a year in 1845 and then to buy it, in order to prevent the railways gaining access to the Silkstone coal resources, and to protect the water supplies. They quickly offered to pass the canal on to the Aire and Calder Company, and to buy the Dearne and Dove Canal, but although they took over the Dearne and Dove Canal from 1 January 1846, they dropped their ideas for the Barnsley Canal. The Barnsley Canal Company then tried to arrange a lease with the Aire and Calder, but negotiations foundered. A series of negotiations took place with the Yorkshire Railway Company, the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway and the Aire and Calder Navigation between 1846 and 1853. It was not until 1854 that the company finally agreed to a lease from the Aire and Calder, by which time traffic was falling rapidly. The takeover was ratified by an Act of Parliament in 1856, although the Barnsley Canal Company was not wound up, as it continued to collect the rent from the lease.