Outram was working on the Peak Forest Canal at the time. At a meeting in Macclesfield, held on 11 March 1796, his proposals for a canal from the Peak Forest via Rudyard to Endon on the Caldon Branch, with a separate branch or railway from Poynton and Norbury to Stockport were welcomed. However, there were dissenters, with some arguing that there was no guarantee that the Peak Forest Canal would succeed, and the Trent and Mersey Canal already had plans to build a branch from their Caldon Branch to Leek. The cost was estimated to be £90,000, and there was not enough financial support, now that the initial rush for building canals, known as Canal Mania, had ended. In 1799, the Peak Forest Canal included clauses for a branch to the collieries at Poynton and Norbury in an Act of Parliament they were trying to obtain, but those clauses were deleted during the parliamentary process. In 1805 and 1806, they attempted to find the original papers from Outram's surveys, and hoped that the Trent and Mersey might support their proposal for a canal from Marple to Lawton, via Macclesfield. There was another proposal in 1810, and various half-hearted attempts to revive the idea between 1814 and 1818, but none came to fruition. In 1824, the Cromford and High Peak Railway, a bold scheme to link the Cromford Canal and the Peak Forest Canal, was being planned, but a suggestion to build a branch of the railway to serve Macclesfield was deferred, as there was nobody from Macclesfield at the meeting. A proposal for a canal from Church Lawton to the Bridgewater Canal near Manchester, passing through Congleton, Macclesfield, and Stockport, was also made, but it was thought that there would be difficulties dealing with the Trent and Mersey Canal at one end and the Trustees of the Duke of Bridgwater at the other. Finally, five gentlemen from Macclesfield placed an advertisement in the "Courier" newspaper on 18 September 1824, which resulted in the Mayor calling a public meeting on 22 September. At the meeting, held at the Macclesfield Arms, the canal was proposed and a committee formed, consisting of the Mayor and the five gentlemen. They would attempt to gain the cooperation of any owners of land through which the canal would pass, and would invite the towns of Congleton and Stockport to join them in the venture. Unlike earlier canals, the spectre of the arrival of the railways was already in sight, and at least one present at the first meeting suggested that a railway might be built.