Q: In this task, you're given a question, along with a context passage. The passage will not have a direct answer to the question, but can include some information and a clue for the answer. Assuming you can only obtain information about one entity in the passage, your job is to determine whether information from the passage can be used to answer the question. Indicate your choice as 'a' for Yes or 'b' for No.
Question: Was the trunk line that was built in the 1840s funded by a government entity? Passage:Historically, the preconditions for a change of the landscape started with the construction of the Cologne-Minden trunk line in the 1840s that connected the river Rhine settlements like Cologne with harbours and trade at the river Weser and so with the Lippe town Hamm, too. Moreover, this railway supported the coal and steel industry development in the northern Ruhr region. The hard coal mining that started in the middle of the 19th century in the Emscher catchment area developed in the following decades direction north and so to the Lippe catchment area, too, where from the 1860s on first problems from mining subsidence and drainage of polluted water appeared. The historical city of Hamm and the towns Lunen, Haltern and Dorsten were small settlements located at the Lippe but expanded with the establishing of hard coal mines starting around 1900. The industrialization caused huge water quality problems in the Lippe tributaries and the Lippe itself; therefore first in 1913 the Sesekegenossenschaft and later in 1926 the Lippeverband as water boards ("Wasserwirtschaftsverbande") were established. Since 1914 the Datteln-Hamm Canal and 1930 the Wesel-Datteln Canal are located in parallel to the Lippe which is not navigable for mass transportation. The canals receive Lippe water or feed the Lippe (to improve dry weather flow) from an exchange facility in Hamm, operated by the Wasserverband Westdeutsche Kanale.

A:
a