The idea of constructing rail, or tram ways, was not new. Railways of some kind were used in England about two hundred years before, that is, about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Thus Roger North writes:—“The manner of the carriage is by laying rails of timber from the colliery to the river, exactly straight and parallel; and bulky carts are made with four rollers fitting those rails, whereby the carriage is so easy that one horse will draw down four or five chaldron of coals, and is an immense benefit to the coal merchants.”
It is said that the word tramway is derived from tram, which was wont to mean a beam of timber and also a waggon. In any case, such rough ways were introduced in mining districts, for, as may be readily believed, one horse could draw twenty times the load upon them that it could on an ordinary road.
The old ways were first made of wood, then of wood faced with iron, then altogether of iron.
Now, in making his railway between Liverpool and Manchester, Stephenson had many difficulties to encounter. He decided that the line should be as direct as possible. But to accomplish this, he would have to pierce hills, build embankments, raise viaducts, and, hardest of all, construct a firm causeway across a treacherous bog called Chat Moss.
“He will never do it,” said some of the most famous engineers of the day. “It is impossible!”
Impossible it certainly seemed to be. Chat Moss was like a sponge, and how was an engineer to build a solid road for heavy trains over four miles of soppy sponge! A person could not trust himself upon it in safety, and when men did venture, they fastened flat boards to their feet, something after the fashion of snow-shoes, and floundered along upon them.
Stephenson began by taking the levels of the Moss in a similar manner. Boards were placed upon the spongy moss, and a footpath of heather followed. Then came a temporary railroad. On this ran the trucks containing the material for a permanent path, which were pushed by boys who learned to trot along easily on the narrow rails.
Drains were dug on either side of the proposed road, and tar-barrels covered with clay were fitted into a sewer underneath the line in the middle of the Moss. Heather, hurdles, tree branches, etc., were spread on the surface, and in some parts an embankment of dry moss itself was laid down. Ton after ton of it disappeared until the directors became alarmed, and the desperate expedient of abandoning the works was considered.
But Stephenson was an Englishman out and out. He never knew when he was beaten. “Keep on filling,” he ordered; and in spite of all criticism and all alarm, he kept his hundreds of navvies hard at work, pouring in load after load of dry turf.
It must be borne in mind, however, that Stephenson did not continue blindly at his task. He had good reason for what he did. His persistence was a patient, intelligent perseverance, and not a stupid obstinacy. His main arguments seem to have been two. He judged that if he constructed a sufficiently wide road, it would float on the moss, even as ice or a raft of wood floats on water and bears heavy weights; and secondly, he seems to have been animated by the idea, that, if necessary, he could pour in enough solid or fairly solid stuff to reach the bottom and rise up to the surface in a hard mass.