7 8 HEROES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER V. 



depending on the wrctclied country roads of last century, 

 remained for half-a-century longer in the depths of barbarity. 



"I observed to-day," says Boswell, in his "Tour to the 

 Hebrides," "that the common way of carrying home their 

 grain here is in loads, on horseback. They have also a few 

 sleds or cars, as we call them in Ayrshire, clumsily made and 

 rarely used." An aged East Lothian farmer, recently dead, 

 informed the writer that in his youth the mode of bringing 

 grain to the market at Haddington was on pack-horses. This 

 was within recent memory before there were either made roads 

 or railways ! 



The solid iron rails mentioned as having been introduced at 

 Colebrookdale were called " scantlings," and consisted of five 

 feet long pieces, four inches in breadth, which were laid down 

 under the wheel, simply to decrease friction, as the wooden 

 trams had previously been. The next stage, that of casting 

 rails with an upright flange to keep the wheels on the track, was 

 reached about 1776, in connection with a colliery belonging to 

 the Duke of Norfolk, near Sheffield. Though the flange was 

 subsequently taken from the rail and put on the wheel, the first 

 century of railway history closes with the adoption of the two 

 chief features of the railway as a travelling track — the use of 

 cross sleepers on which to fasten the rails, and the introduction 

 of the flange to keep the cars upon the track. 



A quarter of a century brought the invention of the oval rail, 

 with a grooved tire upon the wheels, another step towards the 

 realisation of subsequent success. This " edge railway," as it 

 was called, was first used at Lord Penrhyn's slate quarries in 

 Wales. It being found that the oval rail wore into the wheel 

 and caused it to stick, the next step was to make the surface of 

 the rail and the edge of the wheel flat, and, voiVa fouf, the rail 



