Faced with growing threats from railways, and the fact that the Trent and Mersey was proposing to merge with a railway company, the management did all they could to cut costs, but in 1846 reached an agreement to sell the canal to a railway company, which became the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway soon afterwards. Under railway ownership, the canal fared better than many, and commercial carrying continued until 1954. There had been some leisure use of the canal since the end of the First World War, and the North Cheshire Cruising Club, formed in 1943 and based at the High Lane arm, became the first such cruising club on the British inland waterways. There were dangers that the northern end would be isolated under plans to close the Ashton Canal and the lower Peak Forest Canal in the early 1960s, but vigorous campaigning and a growing restoration movement resulted in the Transport Act 1968, which secured the future of those canals. The designation of the canal as part of the Cheshire Ring in 1965 was part of the strategy by the Inland Waterways Association to promote the leisure potential of canals.