Evolution of the Railway 205 



page 37, note), made a will in which he left " to the amendinge 

 of the highwaye or tram, from the weste ende of Bridgegait, 

 in Barnard Castle, 203." There is no reason to doubt that 

 the " highwaye or tram " here referred to was a road across 

 which logs of wood had been laid, the name " tram " being 

 applied thereto by reason of its aforesaid original significa- 

 tion. It is, further, easy to understand how, when the pioneer 

 rail-ways were made entirely of wood, the word tram-way 

 should, for that reason, still be applied to them. Just, also, 

 as " tram " had already passed from a log of wood to a wooden 

 sledge or to a wheelbarrow handle, so it was given by pit- 

 men in the north of England to the small waggon in which 

 coal was pushed or drawn along in the workings. 



When " plates " were nailed on to the wooden rails of the 

 early rail-ways the use of the word tram- way may still have 

 been regarded as appropriate ; it was retained for the plates 

 or rails provided with a flange, and lines constructed with 

 flanged plates or rails were, in turn, called plate-ways, tram- 

 ways, or dram-ways to distinguish them from other ways or 

 roads made with rails having no flange. 



In course of time the wooden rails which had been the 

 original justification for the use of the word or prefix " tram " 

 disappeared, and even the flanged rails were to be met with 

 only on canal or colliery lines ; but " tramway " now a 

 complete misnomer is the name still given in this country 

 to what in the United States are more accurately known as 

 street railways. 



Of the vast number of people in the United Kingdom who 

 daily use the word tramway, or speak of " going by tram," 

 few, probably, realise how they are thus recalling the days 

 alike of log-roads and of those rail-ways of wood which were 

 the pioneers of the iron roads of to-day. 



The designation, also, of " platelayer " was originally 

 applied to the men employed to lay the " plates " of which 

 I have spoken ; but although workers on the permanent way 

 are now, surely, nzi/-layers rather than plate-layers, they are 

 still known by the original name. 



The system of flanged plates, or rails, was widely adopted ; 

 but when, in 1785, it was proposed to build a 3-mile plate- 

 way, or tram-way, of this type between Loughborough and 

 the Nanpantan collieries, the commissioners of a turnpike 



