208 History of Inland Transport 



the wooden sleepers previously used, the iron being either 

 spiked to wooden plugs inserted in holes made in the stones 

 or else fastened by wooden pins into cast-iron " pedestals," 

 as John Bailey calls them, fixed in the stones. 



Wooden rails did not, however, entirely and immediately 

 give way to iron rails. On the contrary, the old system was 

 so far maintained that, according to " The Industrial Re- 

 sources of the Tyne," wooden railways could still be found 

 on the collieries in that district as late as 1860. 



Among the advantages derived from the substitution of 

 iron rails for wooden rails was the fact that a horse could 

 draw, on the level, heavier loads than before. On the other 

 hand, the heavier the load the greater was the danger in 

 taking the waggons down hill-sides with only a wooden 

 brake to check their speed ; and this danger was increased 

 to an even greater degree when the use of iron rails involved 

 the abandonment of the wooden wheels which had hitherto 

 been retained at the back of the waggons in order that the 

 brake should act more effectively. Still further improve- 

 ments thus became necessary, and these first took the form 

 of inclined planes on which the law of gravity was employed, 

 loaded waggons raising empty ones, or having their own 

 descent regulated, by means of a rope passing round a wheel 

 at the top of the incline. Later on stationary engines and 

 chains were substituted for the wheel and the rope, horses 

 then being employed on the level only. 



/ Bailey says on this point : " Waggon ways have generally 



/ been so contrived that the ascents were not greater than a 



single horse could draw a waggon up them ; but some cases 



\ have happened lately where it required more than one horse, 



\ and steam engines have been substituted for horses for 



\ drawing waggons up these ascents. At Urpeth waggon way 



I five or six waggons are drawn up at one ascent, by a steam 



I engine placed at the top." 



Here, then, we have another stage in the process of evolu- 

 tion that was going on. The stationary engine at the top of 

 an incline drawing up, or regulating the descent of, heavier 

 loads, on iron rails, was the first employment on railways of 

 that steam power which was afterwards to develop into the 

 locomotive capable to-day of taking heavy trains at a speed 

 of a mile a"minute. In those early days, however, speed was 



