Editing Rail transport (section)

===Pre-steam modern systems===
{{See also|Funicular|Wagonway|Tramway (industrial)|Plateway}}

====Wooden rails introduced====
[[File:Berlin_Technikmuseum_Holzbahn.jpg|thumb|A 16th-century mine-cart, an early example of un-powered rail transport, used man power to operate.]]
In 1515, [[Matthäus Lang|Cardinal Matthäus Lang]] wrote a description of the [[Reisszug]], a [[funicular]] railway at the [[Hohensalzburg Fortress]] in Austria. The line originally used wooden rails and a [[hemp]] haulage rope and was operated by human or animal power, through a [[treadwheel]].<ref name="fm1">{{cite web |url=http://www.funimag.com/funimag10/RESZUG01.HTM |title=Der Reiszug: Part 1{{Snd}} Presentation |publisher=Funimag |access-date=22 April 2009 |archive-date=20 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211020015136/https://www.funimag.com/funimag10/RESZUG01.HTM |url-status=live }}</ref> The line is still operational, although in updated form and is possibly the oldest operational railway.<ref>{{cite news |first=Reinhard |last=Kriechbaum |url=http://www.die-tagespost.de/Archiv/titel_anzeige.asp?ID=8916 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120628225245/http://www.die-tagespost.de/Archiv/titel_anzeige.asp?ID=8916 |url-status=dead |archive-date=28 June 2012 |title=Die große Reise auf den Berg |work=der Tagespost |date=15 May 2004 |access-date=22 April 2009 |language=de }}</ref>

Wagonways (or [[tramway (industrial)|tramways]]) using wooden rails, hauled by horses, started appearing in the 1550s to facilitate the transport of ore tubs to and from mines and soon became popular in Europe. Such an operation was illustrated in [[Germany]] in 1556 by [[Georgius Agricola]] in his work [[De re metallica]].<ref>Georgius Agricola (trans Hoover), ''[[De re metallica]]'' (1913), p. 156.</ref> This line used "Hund" carts with unflanged wheels running on wooden planks and a vertical pin on the truck fitting into the gap between the planks to keep it going the right way. The miners called the wagons ''Hunde'' ("dogs") from the noise they made on the tracks.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Lee |first=Charles E. |title=The Evolution of Railways |edition=2nd |year=1943 |magazine =Railway Gazette|location=London |page=16 |oclc=1591369}}</ref>

There are many references to their use in central Europe in the 16th century.<ref>Lewis, ''Early wooden railways'', pp. 8–10.</ref> Such a transport system was later used by German miners at [[Caldbeck]], [[Cumbria]], England, perhaps from the 1560s.<ref>Warren Allison, Samuel Murphy and Richard Smith, ''An Early Railway in the German Mines of Caldbeck'' in G. Boyes (ed.), ''Early Railways 4: Papers from the 4th International Early Railways Conference 2008'' (Six Martlets, Sudbury, 2010), pp. 52–69.</ref> A wagonway was built at [[Prescot]], near [[Liverpool]], sometime around 1600, possibly as early as 1594. Owned by Philip Layton, the line carried coal from a pit near Prescot Hall to a terminus about {{convert|1/2|mi|m|spell=in}} away.<ref>{{cite book |last=Jones |first=Mark |title=Lancashire Railways{{Snd}} The History of Steam |publisher=Countryside Books |location=Newbury |date=2012 |page=5 |isbn=978-1-84674-298-9}}</ref> A funicular railway was also made at [[Broseley]] in [[Shropshire]] some time before 1604. This carried coal for James Clifford from his mines down to the [[River Severn]] to be loaded onto barges and carried to riverside towns.<ref>Peter King, ''The First Shropshire Railways'' in G. Boyes (ed.), ''Early Railways 4: Papers from the 4th International Early Railways Conference 2008'' (Six Martlets, Sudbury, 2010), pp. 70–84.</ref> The [[Wollaton Wagonway]], completed in 1604 by [[Huntingdon Beaumont]], has sometimes erroneously been cited as the earliest British railway. It ran from [[Strelley, Nottingham|Strelley]] to [[Wollaton]] near [[Nottingham]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://nottinghamhiddenhistoryteam.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/huntingdon-beaumonts-wollaton-to-strelley-waggonway/ |title=Huntingdon Beaumont's Wollaton to Strelley Waggonway |publisher=Nottingham Hidden History |access-date=23 August 2017 |date=30 July 2013 |archive-date=27 November 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221127031058/https://nottinghamhiddenhistoryteam.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/huntingdon-beaumonts-wollaton-to-strelley-waggonway/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

The [[Middleton Railway]] in [[Leeds]], which was built in 1758, later became the world's oldest operational railway (other than funiculars), albeit now in an upgraded form. In 1764, the first railway in the Americas was built in [[Lewiston, New York]].<ref name="Porter">{{cite book | last=Porter |first=Peter |title=Landmarks of the Niagara Frontier |publisher=Privately printed |year=1914 | oclc=1044424468}}</ref>

====Metal rails introduced ====
[[File:Little Eaton Tramway Replica Wagon small.jpg|thumb|A replica of a "Little Eaton Tramway" wagon, 1795; the tracks are plateways.]]
[[File:Cromford and High Peak Railway cast-iron fishbelly rail.png|thumb|A cast iron fishbelly edge rail manufactured by Outram at the Butterley Company for the [[Cromford and High Peak Railway]] in 1831; these are smooth edge rails for wheels with flanges.]]
In the late 1760s, the [[Coalbrookdale]] Company began to fix plates of [[cast iron]] to the upper surface of the wooden rails. This allowed a variation of [[rail gauge|gauge]] to be used. At first only [[balloon loop]]s could be used for turning, but later, movable points were taken into use that allowed for switching.<ref>{{cite book |author=Vaughan, A. |year=1997 |title=Railwaymen, Politics and Money |location=London |publisher=John Murray |isbn=978-0-7195-5746-0}}</ref>

A system was introduced in which unflanged wheels ran on L-shaped metal plates, which came to be known as [[plateway]]s. [[John Curr]], a [[Sheffield]] colliery manager, invented this flanged rail in 1787, though the exact date of this is disputed. The plate rail was taken up by [[Benjamin Outram]] for wagonways serving his canals, manufacturing them at his [[Butterley Company|Butterley ironworks]]. In 1803, [[William Jessop]] opened the [[Surrey Iron Railway]], a double track plateway, erroneously sometimes cited as world's first public railway, in south London.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.stephensonloco.fsbusiness.co.uk/surreyiron.htm| title=Surrey Iron Railway 200th – 26th July 2003| publisher=Stephenson Locomotive Society| work=Early Railways| url-status=dead| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090512032233/http://www.stephensonloco.fsbusiness.co.uk/surreyiron.htm| archive-date=12 May 2009}}</ref>

[[William Jessop]] had earlier used a form of all-iron [[edge rail (edgeways)|edge rail]] and flanged wheels successfully for an extension to the [[Charnwood Forest Canal]] at [[Nanpantan]], Loughborough, Leicestershire in 1789. In 1790, Jessop and his partner Outram began to manufacture edge rails. Jessop became a partner in the Butterley Company in 1790. The first public edgeway (thus also first public railway) built was [[Lake Lock Rail Road]] in 1796. Although the primary purpose of the line was to carry coal, it also carried passengers.

These two systems of constructing iron railways, the "L" plate-rail and the smooth edge-rail, continued to exist side by side until well into the early 19th century. The flanged wheel and edge-rail eventually proved its superiority and became the standard for railways.

Cast iron used in rails proved unsatisfactory because it was brittle and broke under heavy loads. The [[wrought iron]] invented by [[John Birkinshaw]] in 1820 replaced cast iron. Wrought iron, usually simply referred to as "iron", was a ductile material that could undergo considerable deformation before breaking, making it more suitable for iron rails. But iron was expensive to produce until [[Henry Cort]] patented the [[puddling (metallurgy)|puddling process]] in 1784. In 1783 Cort also patented the [[rolling (metalworking)|rolling process]], which was 15 times faster at consolidating and shaping iron than hammering.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present|last=Landes|first= David. S.|year= 1969|publisher =Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
|location= Cambridge, New York|isbn= 978-0-521-09418-4|pages=91}}</ref> These processes greatly lowered the cost of producing iron and rails. The next important development in iron production was [[hot blast]] developed by [[James Beaumont Neilson]] (patented 1828), which considerably reduced the amount of [[coke (fuel)]] or charcoal needed to produce pig iron.<ref>{{Harvnb|Landes|1969|pp=92}}</ref> Wrought iron was a soft material that contained slag or ''dross''. The softness and dross tended to make iron rails distort and delaminate and they lasted less than 10 years. Sometimes they lasted as little as one year under high traffic. All these developments in the production of iron eventually led to the replacement of composite wood/iron rails with superior all-iron rails.
The introduction of the [[Bessemer process]], enabling steel to be made inexpensively, led to the era of great expansion of railways that began in the late 1860s. Steel rails lasted several times longer than iron.<ref name="Wells1890">{{cite book |last=Wells |first=David A. |year=1890 |title=Recent Economic Changes and Their Effect on Production and Distribution of Wealth and Well-Being of Society |publisher= D. Appleton and Co. |location=New York |oclc=2607599 |url=https://archive.org/details/recenteconomicc01wellgoog}}</ref><ref name="Grubler1990">{{cite book |last=Grübler |first=Arnulf |title=The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures: Dynamics of Evolution and Technological Change in Transport |year=1990 |publisher=Physica-Verlag |location=Heidelberg and New York |url=http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/XB-90-704.pdf |access-date=11 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120301221205/http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/XB-90-704.pdf |archive-date=1 March 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Fogel |first=Robert W. |year=1964 |title=Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History |publisher=The Johns Hopkins Press |location=Baltimore and London |oclc=237790 |url=https://archive.org/details/railroadsamerica00foge }}</ref> Steel rails made heavier locomotives possible, allowing for longer trains and improving the productivity of railroads.<ref>{{cite book |title= Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics |last= Rosenberg |first= Nathan |year= 1982 |publisher= Cambridge University Press |location= Cambridge, New York |isbn= 978-0-521-27367-1 |page= [https://archive.org/details/insideblackboxte00rose/page/60 60] |url= https://archive.org/details/insideblackboxte00rose/page/60 }}</ref> The Bessemer process introduced nitrogen into the steel, which caused the steel to become brittle with age. The [[open hearth furnace]] began to replace the Bessemer process near the end of the 19th century, improving the quality of steel and further reducing costs. Thus steel completely replaced the use of iron in rails, becoming standard for all railways.

The first passenger [[horsecar]] or [[tram]], [[Swansea and Mumbles Railway]], was opened between [[Swansea]] and [[Mumbles]] in [[Wales]] in 1807.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southwest/sites/swansea/pages/mumbles_trainanniv.shtml| title=Early Days of Mumbles Railway| date=15 February 2007| publisher=BBC| access-date=19 September 2007| archive-date=27 March 2009| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090327234527/http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southwest/sites/swansea/pages/mumbles_trainanniv.shtml| url-status=live}}</ref> Horses remained the preferable mode for tram transport even after the arrival of steam engines until the end of the 19th century, because they were cleaner compared to steam-driven trams which caused smoke in city streets.