 While construction of the Chesham and Aylesbury lines was underway Watkin continued to press for the extension from Chesham to the LNWR, as did prominent manufacturers in Chesham. However, construction of the extensions had left the MR seriously exposed financially, forcing the board to cut dividends in July 1889. At a Special General Meeting on 12 February 1890 matters came to a head. Shareholders endorsed the decision to acquire the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and authorised the MR to acquire the moribund Brill Tramway, which connected with the A & BR at Quainton Road station, but blocked the expensive extension beyond Chesham, as well as Watkin's proposed extension to Moreton Pinkney to the north. (Watkin's Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway was refused consent at the time to build south to connect with the MR at Moreton Pinkney, which would have rendered the Moreton Pinkney branch an inevitably loss-making branch line serving a very lightly populated area. Watkin was determined to build this section as a vital segment in his vision of a London – Manchester railway, and proposed that if the MR would not build this section, the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway would build the line themselves and lease it to the MR. The MR board refused to have anything to do with the scheme. Moreton Pinkney was eventually served by Watkin's railway network in 1899 as Culworth railway station on the Great Central Railway.)
