Evolution of the Railway 207 



The substitution, from about 1767, of iron rails even 

 though they were only cast-iron rails for wooden ones be- 

 came the great event in the development of railways at this 

 period, and gave the newer lines their distinguishing feature 

 as compared with their predecessors. Each fresh line made 

 took the credit of being an " iron rail-way " ; and not only 

 did that designation remain in vogue in this country for 

 several decades but it fixed, also, the names of the railway 

 systems in various Continental countries, as shown by the 

 term " Chemin de Fer " in France and Belgium, " Eisenbahn " 

 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland ; " Strada ferrata "-in 

 Italy, and " Ferrocarril " in Spain (the English equivalent in 

 each instance being " Iron Road "), and by the name of 

 Holland Iron Railway Company (" Hollandsche Yzeren 

 Spoorvegs-maatschappy ") by which one of the oldest of the 

 railway companies in Holland where it was founded in 

 1837 is still known. 1 



One factor in the preference shown for iron rails over^ 

 wooden ones was the consideration of cost. Alluding to the J 

 wooden railways of Durham, in his " General View " of the 

 agriculture of that county, drawn up for the Board of Agri- 

 culture in 1810, John Bailey, of Chillingham, says : "Of late 

 years, on account of the high price of wood, iron railways 

 have been substituted." With an increase in the price of 

 timber, owing to the greater scarcity thereof, as the available 

 supplies in the southern counties became more depleted, the 

 time may well have come when, apart from other considera- 

 tions, it was found cheaper in the north to make cast-iron 

 rails than to import wooden ones. The need for importing 

 so much timber was further diminished, from about 1739, by 

 the substitution, in many instances, of blocks of stone for 



1 The adoption of the designation " Iron," as applied to the railway 

 systems abroad, was probably influenced to some extent by Thomas 

 Gray's " Observations on a General Iron Rail- way." First published in 

 1820, the work had gone through five editions by 1825, and in a letter 

 addressed, in 1845, to Sir Robert Peel, urging the claims of Gray to 

 generous treatment by the State, on the ground of his being the "author" 

 (sic) of the railway system, Thomas Wilson wrote : " His name and his fame 

 were spreading in other lands ; his work was translated into all the Euro- 

 pean languages, and to the impression produced by it may be attributes 

 the popular feeling throughout Germany and France in favour of rail-road 

 which has terminated in the adoption of his railway system in Germany 

 and Belgium especially." 



