Of the vast number of people in the United Kingdom who daily use the word tramway, or speak of "going by tram," few, probably, realise how they are thus recalling the days alike of log-roads and of those rail-ways of wood which were the pioneers of the iron roads of to-day.
The designation, also, of "platelayer" was originally applied to the men employed to lay the "plates" of which I have spoken; but although workers on the permanent way are now, surely, rail-layers rather than plate-layers, they are still known by the original name.
The system of flanged plates, or rails, was widely adopted; but when, in 1785, it was proposed to build a 3-mile plate-way, or tram-way, of this type between Loughborough and the Nanpantan collieries, the commissioners of a turnpike road it was necessary to cross objected, on the ground that the raised flange would be dangerous to traffic passing along the road. Following on these objections, William Jessop, the engineer of the proposed line, decided, in 1788, to abandon flanged plates and flat wheels, and to substitute for them flat rails and flanged wheels.[[28]] He proceeded to cast some "edge-rails" which overcame the scruples of the road commissioners, and the Loughborough and Nanpantan rail-way was opened in 1789, being the first having iron rails with a flat surface, on the "edge" of which wheels with a flange on their inner side were run. The plate, or tram, system of flanged rails still had many advocates, and for a time there was much controversy as to the respective merits of the two systems; but the principle introduced by Jessop was eventually adopted for railways in general, and became one of the most important of the developments that rendered possible the attainment of high speeds in rail transport. "The substitution of the flanged wheel for the flanged plate was," said Mr. James Brunlees, C.E., in his presidential address in the Mechanical Science Section at the 1883 meeting of the British Association, "an organic change which has been the forerunner of the great results accomplished in modern travelling by railway."
For some thirty years after Jessop's improvement, the rails, of whichever kind, were still made of cast-iron, wrought-iron rails, tried at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1805, not coming into general use until about 1820, when John Birkenshaw, of the Bedlington iron-works, invented an efficient and economical method of rolling iron bars suitable for use as railway lines.[[29]] By 1785 iron rails, even though only cast-iron rails, had widely taken the place of the wooden rails which had then been in use for over a hundred years.
The substitution, from about 1767, of iron rails—even though they were only cast-iron rails—for wooden ones became the great event in the development of railways at this period, and gave the newer lines their distinguishing feature as compared with their predecessors. Each fresh line made took the credit of being an "iron rail-way"; and not only did that designation remain in vogue in this country for several decades but it fixed, also, the names of the railway systems in various Continental countries, as shown by the term "Chemin de Fer" in France and Belgium, "Eisenbahn" in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; "Strada ferrata" in Italy, and "Ferrocarril" in Spain (the English equivalent in each instance being "Iron Road"), and by the name of Holland Iron Railway Company ("Hollandsche Yzeren Spoorvegs-maatschappy") by which one of the oldest of the railway companies in Holland—where it was founded in 1837—is still known.[[30]]
One factor in the preference shown for iron rails over wooden ones was the consideration of cost. Alluding to the wooden railways of Durham, in his "General View" of the agriculture of that county, drawn up for the Board of Agriculture in 1810, John Bailey, of Chillingham, says: "Of late years, on account of the high price of wood, iron railways have been substituted." With an increase in the price of timber, owing to the greater scarcity thereof, as the available supplies in the southern counties became more depleted, the time may well have come when, apart from other considerations, it was found cheaper in the north to make cast-iron rails than to import wooden ones. The need for importing so much timber was further diminished, from about 1739, by the substitution, in many instances, of blocks of stone for the wooden sleepers previously used, the iron being either spiked to wooden plugs inserted in holes made in the stones or else fastened by wooden pins into cast-iron "pedestals," as John Bailey calls them, fixed in the stones.
Wooden rails did not, however, entirely and immediately give way to iron rails. On the contrary, the old system was so far maintained that, according to "The Industrial Resources of the Tyne," wooden railways could still be found on the collieries in that district as late as 1860.
Among the advantages derived from the substitution of iron rails for wooden rails was the fact that a horse could draw, on the level, heavier loads than before. On the other hand, the heavier the load the greater was the danger in taking the waggons down hill-sides with only a wooden brake to check their speed; and this danger was increased to an even greater degree when the use of iron rails involved the abandonment of the wooden wheels which had hitherto been retained at the back of the waggons in order that the brake should act more effectively. Still further improvements thus became necessary, and these first took the form of inclined planes on which the law of gravity was employed, loaded waggons raising empty ones, or having their own descent regulated, by means of a rope passing round a wheel at the top of the incline. Later on stationary engines and chains were substituted for the wheel and the rope, horses then being employed on the level only.
Bailey says on this point: "Waggon ways have generally been so contrived that the ascents were not greater than a single horse could draw a waggon up them; but some cases have happened lately where it required more than one horse, and steam engines have been substituted for horses for drawing waggons up these ascents. At Urpeth waggon way five or six waggons are drawn up at one ascent, by a steam engine placed at the top."
Here, then, we have another stage in the process of evolution that was going on. The stationary engine at the top of an incline drawing up, or regulating the descent of, heavier loads, on iron rails, was the first employment on railways of that steam power which was afterwards to develop into the locomotive capable to-day of taking heavy trains at a speed of a mile a minute. In those early days, however, speed was not regarded as a matter of any importance. Colliery managers were quite satisfied with a steady three miles an hour.