steam

Part 7 - Railways

The first idea of a railway on record is the Greek "rutway" built about 700 BCE to transport ships across the Isthmus of Corinth. It was up to 8.5 km long and was used for the next 650 years by anyone willing to pay for the service.

Railways, started appearing in the 1550's. Wagons or trams could be hauled by horses, more easily over smooth wooden rails than the rough roads then available. A funicular railway in Austria used wooden rails to haul small carts up a steep hill in 1515. It was driven by a hemp rope around a drum powered by a man-power, tread-wheel.

A similar device was used by miners at Caldbeck, England, about 1560s, and a funicular was used to carry coal down to the river Severn where it was loaded onto barges about 1604.

In 1725, the Tanfield Wagonway extended over 5 miles of double, wooden track, through deep cuttings and over the world's first large stone railway bridge, to transport coal to the river Tyne. At peak times traffic was 60 horse drawn, 2.5 ton capacity wagons (with flanged wooden wheels) per hour.

In the late 1760's, the Coalbrookdale Company fixed cast iron plates to the upper surface of wooden rails to reduce wear and, about 1787, John Curr developed L-shaped, cast iron rails. Wooden rails wore out quickly and cast iron rails broke under heavy loads so they were replaced by wrought iron rails that were more ductile and more expensive until, in 1783, Henry Cort patented the puddling process, to make less expensive wrought iron, and then devised a grooved rolling mill, to roll hot iron into rails, that was 15 times faster than hammering. 

In 1825, John Stevens of Hoboken, New Jersey built a half mile, circular test railroad track and also built a steam locomotive, the first in America. A pinion gear on the locomotive drove the  locomotive along a rack attached to the roadbed. 

In 1830, The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began operating over 23 miles of track of iron topped hardwood rails and Peter Cooper built the first American steam locomotive, Tom Thumb.

The Middleton Railway, in Leeds, England, began in 1758 and, in 1799, the wooden tracks were replaced with iron edge rails at a gauge of 4 ft 1 in (1,245 mm). And, in 1812, it became the first commercial railway to successfully use a steam locomotive, the Salamanca, driven through John Blenkinsop's pinion and gear rack.

Trevithick obtained a patent in 1802 and on 21 February 1804 his steam locomotive hauled ten tons of iron and 70 impromptu passengers from the Pen-y-darren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil to Abercynon in South Wales, Britain; a distance of 9.75 miles (15.69 km) in 4 hours and 5 minutes, an average speed of approximately 2.4 mph (3.9km/h).

By 1831, the Cromford and High Peak Railway was using wheels with flanges on edge-rails and this became the standard for all future railways.

Mobile steam engines became practical with Trevithick's lighter and more efficient engines and by the 1850's many commercial vehicles were sold despite laws that prohibited the use of steam powered vehicles on roads. However, the engines were used for agricultural machines such as threshers and tractors and for road construction vehicles such as road rollers.

The first public railway in England, built to transport coal and passengers, was the Lake Lock Rail Road in 1796. The first passenger railway, was opened between Swansea and Mumbles in Wales in 1807. Horses remained the preferred driving power for tram transport in towns because they were cleaner than the smoky, steam driven trams.