CHAPTER II
EARLY TRAMROADS AND RAILWAYS
It has sometimes been remarked, by unfriendly critics, that tramways are an apology for bad roads. That is to say, if road surfaces were perfect, there would be no need to lay rails in order to allow vehicles to run easily.
Although this view of the case may be no better than a quarter-truth, it is justified to the extent that tramways were, as a matter of fact, the outcome of an attempt to escape from bad road surfaces. In the early days of mining, coals were taken by horsedrawn wagons from the pits to the harbours. The passage and re-passage of heavy vehicles on the same roadway led to the formation of deep ruts; and the first step towards both the tramway and the railway was taken when logs of wood or 'trams' were laid in the ruts to facilitate transport.
The next step was to make the upper surface of the log round and the rims of the wheels hollow, so that they fitted over the rails and kept the wagons on the track. Owing to the upper part of the rails wearing away quickly, thin plates of iron were in some cases nailed to them. This improvement led to the adoption of a cast-iron rail, fastened to wooden sleepers.
The earliest cast-iron railway was laid down before the middle of the eighteenth century, about one hundred years after the first wooden 'tram-ways.' Half a century later we find the first rail-and-wheel combination as we know it on modern tramways and railways, where the wheel carries an inner flange and runs upon the head of a narrow metal rail. This is the form which experience has proved to be best adapted for safety, speed, and economy in power. The improvements made since the beginning of the nineteenth century have been in matters of detail.
Many miles of colliery tramroads were in existence when—at the beginning of the nineteenth century—the idea of using the steam engine in place of the horse was taken up by engineers. They were concerned at first solely with the carriage of coal; the idea of conveying passengers arose at a later date, after the steam automobile had been tried and abandoned for the time being. George Stephenson, for instance, ran his first locomotives on colliery tramroads; and the first railway—between Stockton and Darlington—was used for passengers merely as an afterthought. It was, in fact, designed to be a tramroad for the use of the public in general transport by horse traction.
The most curious feature of this stage in the evolution of locomotion was that, although Stephenson's locomotives had been at work for several years and although several schemes of iron roads had been projected, very few people had any conception of the development awaiting the locomotive and iron road in combination. They did not even appreciate the proved fact that the locomotive was a more efficient means of transport than the horse. An immense amount of pioneering work had to be done before the impression of a new era could be borne in upon the public mind. These were the days when the Quarterly Review backed 'old Father Thames against the Woolwich Railway for any sum' and when a witness before a Parliamentary Committee (on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill, in 1825) thought himself safe in suggesting that a steam locomotive could not start against a gale of wind.
When these prejudices were overcome, many years had to pass before the objections of landowners and citizens were worn down. Railway engineers spent most of their time in a form of diplomatic warfare with opponents to their schemes; huge sums—part of which still lingers in the capital accounts of railway companies—were spent in Parliamentary proceedings over Railway Bills. This barren process had to be repeated when electric traction made its appearance; but happily the electrical fight was not upon quite so extensive a scale, nor was the period of preparation followed by anything comparable to the Railway Mania of 1845, when the public made up for its early contempt of railway enterprise by tumbling over itself to get shares in some of the most crazy schemes which were ever put into shape by unscrupulous company promoters.
The early history of the steam railway is interesting in connection with electrical locomotion for two reasons. It shows that the railroad proper evolved out of the tramroad or 'light railway,' as it would now be called—a type of line which is specially suited to electrical operation. It also includes a controversy between three modes of traction; and this controversy forms a very good introduction to a discussion of the reasons why electricity is so economical in locomotion.
These three modes were (1) stationary engines: (2) locomotives: (3) the device known as the 'atmospheric railway.'