Railroad history

Source in inland water transport

The earliest railroads reinforced transportation patterns that had developed centuries before. During the Middle Ages most heavy or bulky items were carried by water wherever possible. Where natural interconnection among navigable rivers was lacking, gaps in trade were likely to develop, most notably at watersheds. By the 16th century canal building was being widely used in Europe to integrate waterway systems based on natural streams. During the Industrial Revolution canal networks became urgent necessities in western Europe and the western Mediterranean. In Britain and France the increased use of coal for raising steam and for iron smelting greatly increased the need for canal transportation. In the 50 years after 1775 England and Wales were webbed with canals to provide reasonably inexpensive transport of coal. But in areas of concentrated industry in hilly country, such as around Birmingham and in the “Black Country” of England, or areas of heavy coal production in droughty uplands, as in western County Durham, the transporting of coal by water seemed impracticable.

A development of the late Middle Ages, the plateway, suggested a means to make steam-powered land transport practicable. In central Europe most of the common metals were being mined by the 16th and 17th centuries, but, because they occurred in low concentrations, great tonnages of ore had to be mined to produce small yields of usable material. In that situation it was helpful to provide a supporting pavement on which wheels might run with somewhat reduced friction. Recourse was had to the minimum pavement possible, that provided by two parallel rails or plates supporting the wheels of a wagon. The wheels were guided by a flange either on the rail or on the wheel. The latter was ultimately preferred, because with the flange on the wheel debris was less likely to lodge on the rail. In the Harz Mountains, the Black Forest, the Ore Mountains, the Vosges, Steiermark, and other mining areas such railroads or plateways were widespread before the 18th century.

The bulk and weight of the steam engine suggested its being mounted on a railway. This occurred in Britain where, in the 17th century, coal mining had become common in the northeast in Tyneside and in South Wales. By 1800 each of these areas also had an extensive plateway system depending on gravity-induced movement or animal traction. The substitution of steam-engine traction was logical. The timing of this shift during the first decade of the 19th century was dictated by improvements in the steam engine. The weight-to-power ratio was unfavourable until 1804, when a Cornish engineer, Richard Trevithick, constructed a steam engine of his own design. In 1802 at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire he built a steam-pumping engine that operated at 145 pounds per square inch (roughly 1,000 kilopascals) pressure. He mounted the high-pressure engine on a car with wheels set to operate on the rails of a cast-iron tramroad located at Pen-y-Darren, Wales.

In the United States Oliver Evans, a Delaware wheelwright, in 1805 built an engine with steam pressure well above the single atmosphere that Watt used in his early engines. Evans was commissioned to construct a steam-powered dredge to be used on the docks in Philadelphia. He built his dredge away from the Schuylkill River, having it move itself, ponderously, to its destination by rail.

Early European railroads