198 History of Inland Transport 



any share in a trade offering such great opportunities and 

 undergoing such rapid expansion. The coal had but a nominal 

 value so long as it could not be got away from the pit-banks. 



The first attempt to overcome the difficulties of the situa- 

 tion was in the direction of laying parallel courses of stone 

 or wood for the waggon wheels to run upon ; but here we 

 have the equivalent of a partially-paved roadway rather 

 than of actual rails. The latter came when the parallel 

 wheel-courses of wood were reduced to what William Hutchin- 

 son, in his " View of Northumberland " (1778), calls " strings 

 of wood," for the accommodation of " large unwieldy car- 

 riages or waggons." 



Nicholas Wood says that these wooden rails had a length 

 of about six feet, and were five or six inches in thickness, with 

 a breadth of about the same proportions. They were pegged 

 down to sleepers placed across the track at a distance of 

 about two f'et apart, so that one rail reached across three 

 sleepers. The spaces between the sleepers were filled in with 

 ashes or small stones, to protect the feet of the horses. The 

 waggons were in the form of a hopper, being much broader 

 and longer at the top than at the bottom. At first all four 

 wheels of the waggon were made either of one entire piece 

 of wood or of two or three pieces of wood fastened together, 

 the rim, in either case, being so shaped as to have on one 

 side a projection, or flange, which would keep the wheel 

 on the rails. 



This, then, was the earliest example of a railway the 

 fundamental principle of which is, of course, the use of rails to 

 facilitate the drawing or the propulsion of a moving body, 

 and not the particular form of motive power (however great 

 the importance, in actual practice, of this matter of detail) 

 by which the traction is secured. 



The date of the first "rail-way" (so called) in the form 

 described, and in accordance with the principle mentioned, 

 is uncertain ; but Galloway, in his " History of Coal Mining," 

 mentions a document dated 1660 which refers to a sale of 

 timber used in the construction of waggon-ways ; while 

 Roger North, writing in 1676, describes the then existing rail- 

 ways in terms which suggest that they were, at that date, a 

 well-established institution. Speaking generally, therefore, 

 one may assume that the pioneer rail-ways were brought 



