Earliest Railways (3) : The iron road

In part 1 of this series we saw how the idea of the railway went back millennia, in part 2 we saw the rise of wooden wagonways. Wooden rails quickly wore out, a more durable alternative was needed.

Some tramways added an iron wearing rail atop the wooden rail. However the thin wearing rail, while more durable, also wore out under heavy use or became detached from the wooden rail underneath [1]. What was needed was to make the rails solely out of iron, a much stronger solution and with reduced friction compared to wood. Iron rails could also carry heavier wagons which might break wooden rails. The strongest rails were fish-bellied rails, a type patented by Willian Jessop, which had the thickest iron (the "fish belly") in between the sleepers [2]. However cast iron rails were much more expensive than wood.

Fish bellied rail, public domain image [3]

Among the earliest iron rails were at Coalbrookdale in 1767 [4], they may have also been used at the Middleton Railway as early as 1758 [5]. The Caldon Low line in Derbyshire also had iron rails not long afterwards. Cast iron rails also appeared in South Wales in the early 1790s. The extra expense of iron rails meant that such a railway was a more long term investment often attracting interest from canal companies who saw railways as a cheaper way to extend their network especially in areas of hilly terrain where a canal would need to major expense of lock flights [6]. A major line was the Cromford & High Peak Railway which linked to the Cromford Canal.

Cromford & High Peak Railway

The rails used on these tramways were known as "edge-rails". They were intended to work with flanged wheel, as railway tracks do today. However there was a competing type of track which gained popularity in the late 1700s, the flanged rail or plateway. These were L-shaped and intended for use with wagons which had flat (unflanged) wheels [7]. They were first developed by John Curr in 1787 and were cheaper and easier to make than edge-rails [8]. They would also allow normal road carts to use the plateway, though in the event this seldom occurred. Networks of plateways quickly expanded, especially in the Midlands and South Wales though the North East of England where the largest wooden wagonway networks had been built the edge-rail remained the rail of choice. Plateways lost their popularity as steam power began to be used.

A drawback with cast-iron rails was their brittleness under heavy load [9]. Plateways helped alleviate the problem somewhat. The main breakthrough came with the wrought-iron rail. Wrought-iron was stronger and was patented by John Birkenshaw in 1820 [10] as a T-rail with a flat top and a fish-belly to add strength between sleepers, a development of which is now standard on railways across the world. Birkenshaw's rails were supported by George Stephenson and used on the Stockton & Darlington main line in 1825 and the rest (as they say) is history...

Wagon of the Stratford & Moreton Tramway, notice the rails

[1] Andy Guy & Jim Rees, Early Railways 1569-1830 (Shire Publications, 2016) p. 18
[2] Bertram Baxter, Stone Blocks & Iron Rails (Tramroads) (David & Charles, 1966) p. 43
[3] John Elfreth Watkins, The development of the American rail and track (US Govt, 1891) p. 657
[4] Baxter p. 40
[5] Mark Jones, Discovering Britain's First Railways (History Press, 2012) p. 25
[6] Baxter p. 22
[7] Jones p. 26
[8] Guy & Rees p. 20
[9] Michael Bailey, "The history of tracks and trains: a lesson in joined-up thinking", Proceedings of ICE Civil Engineering 158 August 2005, p. 135
[10] Baxter p. 53

Earliest Railways Part 2 : The wooden wagonways

As we saw in Part 1 the concept of a tracked transport system dated back to Ancient Greece. The first railway in Britain dates back to the mid-16th century used in mines in Cumbria.

The first recorded surface "rayle way" or railway is the system set up by the entrepreneur Huntington Beaumont in 1604. He set up a 3km wooden rail track between Wollaton Manor and the river Trent in Nottinghamshire [1]. This railway system transported coal in horse drawn wagons from his mine to a yard at Wollaton Lane [2]. The reason for laying wooden tracks was due to the poor state of the roads at the time. Even a simple wooden track would allow for a more even transit and less friction for goods reducing costs dramatically. A horse could haul a wagon twice as heavy along rails than on the road. They also did not suffer from road obstructions and potholes and were easier to clear of snow and mud.

The competitive advantage gained by using these wooden rails or wagonways meant that they spread across the country with lines being built in places like Broseley (1605), Wickham (1650),  Ravensworth (1632) and the first line in Wales at Neath in 1697. By the start of the 18th century new lines came on rapidly.

New mines and quarries were opened as a result of the transport benefits of the wagonways. More ambitious mine owners helped push the technology further, sparking a boom in civil engineering as cuttings, embankments and bridges were built for the wagonways. The Causey Arch built for the Tanfield Wagonway in 1727 is a surviving example of this work [3] and is the oldest surviving railway bridge. The North East was a major user of wagonways due to the number of coal mines and the nature of the landscape. By 1800 most major pits in the region were served by wagonways with over 250 miles of track laid (often referred to as "Newcastle roads").

Interestingly these systems used flanged wheels from the start [4], though it may be earlier systems with non-flanged wheels have simply left no trace. Rails were made out of a variety of woods such as oak, ash or beech. Beech became more popular as time went on due to its resistance from insect damage [5]. Sleepers were often made from oak, once bedded into the ground they were intended to be undisturbed (or allowed to "sleep" - which may be where the name sleeper comes from!)

The main drawback of the wooden wagonways was the wooden nature of the track. The rails wore out quickly, regular replacement adding to the cost of operation. To help alleviate this a second rail was pegged atop the original rail. To start with these were also made of wood but later an iron wearing rail was put on top of the wooden rail, this happened from the early 1700s. The height of the rails was also increased so a layer of earth could be laid over the sleepers to aid the horses (and also protect the sleepers from damage).

For 200 years the wooden wagonways spread across the country, with hundreds of miles of track and millions of wagon movements. However the technology did not change greatly for a long time. Until the advent of the iron rail road that is.

To be continued...

Horse drawn wagon at the National Railway Museum

[1] Michael Bailey, "The history of tracks and trains: a lesson in joined-up thinking", Proceedings of ICE Civil Engineering 158 August 2005, p. 134
[2] Mark Jones, Discovering Britain's First Railways (History Press, 2012) p. 16
[3] Bailey p. 135
[4] Andy Guy & Jim Rees, Early Railways 1569-1830 (Shire Publications, 2016) p. 9
[5] Bertram Baxter, Stone Blocks & Iron Rails (Tramroads) (David & Charles, 1966) p. 37

Earliest Railways Part 1 : England's first railways

Many people assume that the story of railways began in the early 19th century with the Rocket and other early steam locomotives, however the story of railways goes back many hundreds of years before that. This series will examine the earliest railways of Britain until the dawn of the steam age.

What is a railway? Well a definition many people will agree with is that a railway is a track system which wheeled vehicles run on, guided by the tracks. The earliest of these tracked systems goes back all the way to the Classical World [1].

Ancient Greece and later Rome had a number of tracked systems, the most well-known of which being across the Isthmus of Corinth called the Diolkos which was used by the Corinthian Navy from 600BCE to transfer ships [2] from the Corinthian Gulf to the Saronic. These tracked systems were unlike what we would consider a modern railway though, consisting of deep grooves cut in stone slabs for the wheels of vehicles to travel in. Such grooves have been found in a number of locations across the Classical World, a notable one being at the Três Minas gold mine in Portugal [3].

One problem with tracing tracked systems of this period is that the passage of time and the lack of supporting evidence means that it is difficult sometimes to know for sure if grooves are the remains of a track system or just the natural wear and tear caused by thousands of carts over the years [4]. However consistent gauge and depth is a good indicator that a tramway once existed at a given location. The gauge usually used by Roman tramways was around 1.2m which isn't far off standard gauge today [5]. The grooves usually cut across the centre of the slabs, which would be remarkable to just be by coincidence.

After the fall of the Roman Empire such tramways fell into disuse or at least their continued use in the so-called Dark Ages has not been documented. Railways began to reappear in Europe during the late Medieval Period, a common type being known as the Leitnagel which used pins on trucks guided by a wooden track. A method similar in manner to a Scalextric! [6] These railways were generally short in length and usually underground in mines to transport mined materials to the surface. Leitnagel trucks were small in size, around 1.2m long and 1/2m wide (early mines often had narrow tunnels) and were pushed along by miners. The blunt pin running in the groove in the track to stop it from leaving the track. The trucks were known as dogs as when they moved they were said to make a sound like a dog bark! [7]

It was this type of railway which was introduced to England in the 1560s. Queen Elizabeth set up the Company of Mines Royal in 1564 to mine copper which was needed in ever greater quantities for bronze production for cannons. Surviving inventories from the time list, and physical evidence has been found, of Leitnagel type railways at mines in the Keswick area of Lake District in the late 1560s. These railways are probably the first in England.

Leitnagel Trucks by Georgius Agricola (De Re Metallica) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Within a few decades the earliest surface railways would appear, a network of horse powered lines that would soon exceed over 1,500 miles of track. [8]

To be continued...

[1] Andy Guy & Jim Rees, Early Railways 1569-1830 (Shire Publications, 2016) p. 7
[2] J. G. Landels, Engineering in the Ancient World (Constable, 2000) p. 183
[3] Mark Jones, Discovering Britain's First Railways (History Press, 2012) p. 15
[4] Landels p. 182
[5] Jones p. 10
[6] Guy & Rees p. 8
[7] Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica Book VI (1561) p. 156
[8] Bertram Baxter, Stone Blocks & Iron Rails (Tramroads) (David & Charles, 1966) p. 15