What is a wagonway and how did it differ from a steam railway?
A wagonway was a horse-drawn rail system used to haul wagons, predating the steam locomotive. It operated using horses to pull wagons along wooden or iron rails, and one horse on a wagonway could haul between 10 and 13 long tons of coal per run, roughly four times the load possible on ordinary roads. Steam railways replaced wagonways gradually through the 19th century, though horses continued to be used on steam lines for yard shunting well into the 1830s.
Where was the first wagonway in England built?
Huntingdon Beaumont completed the Wollaton Wagonway in 1604, running from the mines at Strelley to Wollaton Lane End just west of Nottingham. Wagonways between Broseley and Jackfield in Shropshire from 1605, used by James Clifford, may be somewhat older.
What was the Diolkos and why is it significant to the history of wagonways?
The Diolkos was a paved trackway across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece, in use from around 600 BC. Wheeled vehicles ran in grooves cut into limestone to transport boats overland. It remained in use for over 650 years, until at least the 1st century AD, making it the earliest evidence of a guided-track transport system.
What was the difference between a plateway and an edge rail on wagonways?
Plateways used L-shaped iron rails with an upstanding flange to keep flat-wheeled wagons on track, while edge rails used a plain rail with flanges built onto the wheels instead. William Jessop introduced the edge rail on a line near Loughborough in 1789. Edge rails became the standard that modern railways still use, as plateways accumulated mud and stones in their flanges and caused wheels to bind.
When did steam power first run on a wagonway?
Richard Trevithick made the first recorded use of steam power on a railway in 1804, running a high-pressure locomotive on an L-section plateway near Merthyr Tydfil. The trial was not commercially successful; the locomotive was more expensive than horses and broke the rails on all three of its trips from the Penydarren iron mines to the Merthyr-Cardiff Canal.
What were pole roads and how did they relate to wagonways?
Pole roads were a form of temporary wooden-rail wagonway built by timber harvesting companies in the southeastern United States into the 20th century. They used unmarketable logs as rails, laid directly on the ground without sleepers, at a cost of between $100 and $500 per mile. Purpose-built steam locomotives such as Perdido, built in 1885 by Adams and Price Locomotive and Machinery Works of Nashville, Tennessee, were used to haul trains of logs along these lines.