CATALOGUE OF THE MECHANICAL ENGINEERING COLLECTION. 91 



courses. These ways consisted of squared timber rails laid in the 

 ground and held to gauge by cross timbers to which they were 

 fastened by wooden pins. 



Roger North in 1672, in his biography of his brother Francis, the 

 Lord Chancellor, describes a wooden railway (see fig. 44) which he 

 had seen at Newcastle during the reign of Charles II, as follows: 

 ^' The manner of the carriage is by laying rails of timber from the 

 colliery down to the river exactly straight and parallel, and bulky 

 carts are made with rowlets fitting these rails, whereby the carriage 

 is so easy that one horse will draw four or five chaldrons of coal." 

 The Newcastle chaldron weighed 5,936 pounds, so that one horse 

 hauled 8 or 9 tons. 



The price of iron was materially reduced as coal became cheap and 

 abundant, and at length it became possible to use it in the construc- 

 tion of rails. The earliest iron used in track construction was cast 

 in plates 3 or 4 feet long, 2 or S inches wide, and one-half or three- 

 fourths of an inch thick. These plates were spiked on top of the 

 wooden stringer rail where the wear was the greatest. 



FIG. 45. FI.SH-BELLY I{.\IL. P.VTENTED BY WILLI.^M JESSOP, 17S9. 



As timber was expensive in England at the close of the Eighteenth 

 Century many attempts were made to devise a cast-iron rail that 

 should suit the traffic of the English tramroads. A fair impression 

 can be obtained of the crude ideas that the early English tramway 

 contractors had in regard to rails from the following description 

 of specimens on exhibition : 



Model of Cast-iron Edge Rail, 1789. Patented in England by William 

 Jessop, Mine Engineer, and Laid on a Road in Loughborough. 



The rail is fish-bellied and at first was not supported by a chair, 

 the wood or stone block being hewn to fit the end of the rail. Near 

 the ends the rail has a flat projecting base in which there are holes 

 for the bolts which fastened them to the wooden block or sleeper. 



Cat. No. 180,205 U.S.N.M. 



Model of Cast Edge Rail, 1797, with Joints Supported by Chairs. 



These were the first chairs adopted ,and were cast the reverse of 

 the ends of the rail, having two bolts through the stem of the rail at 

 each joint. They were laid on the Lawson Main Colliery. New 



