The LSWR obtained an Act on 16 July 1846 authorising a line from Weybridge via Chertsey to a terminus near Staines bridge, on the south side at Egham. However the WS&SWR No 2 Act (the No 1 Act was described under "Windsor", above) foreshortened this Chertsey, Parliament preferring to let the WS&SWR have scope take territory between Staines and Pirbright with a southerly Chertsey line proposal of its own. The slump following the railway mania killed off this WS&SWR scheme, but by then the LSWR was opening from Weybridge to Chertsey, on 14 February 1848. Hampton Court Palace attracted already 178,000 visitors annually, and a branch was proposed, and opened on 1 February 1849. Cobb states that the intermediate station at Thames Ditton was opened in 1851, but Butt says that it opened with the opening of the branch. The branch was worked by horse traction at first, a vehicle being detached from main line trains at the junction. By 1855 trains from London travelled conventionally. Having reached Waterloo, the LSWR still harboured a desire to get nearer to the City of London, which was the chief destination of arriving passengers. Improvised Waterloo was added to incrementally in 1854, 1860, 1869, 1875, 1878 and 1885 with no coherent plan. It was the South Eastern Railway who made the first move in 1859, promoting and largely funding a London Bridge and Charing Cross Railway (CCR) company, which obtained an Act. It was to have three tracks; it did not envisage today's Waterloo East, but there was to be a connection to the LSWR Waterloo Bridge station. It was authorised as double track, but was actually built as single. The cost of all alterations at the LSWR station was to be borne by the CCR. The CCR line was opened to traffic on 11 January 1864, but the branch into the LSWR station was "opened" but no trains ran. The LSWR had opposed the CCR scheme in Parliament (asking unsuccessfully the SER to allow use of or track to London Bridge station) — SER would soon have its Charing Cross (City of Westminster) second 'London' terminus. The CCR said that they had fulfilled their obligations under the Act by building the connecting line. After much argument, the SER arranged a London Bridge service jointly with the London and North Western Railway (LNWR); it ran from Euston via Willesden and Kensington, to be owned by the LSWR from Kensington via Waterloo; this started running on 1 July 1865.