Editing Rail transport (section)

====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.