Early Wooden Railways

M. J. T. Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040435731
• Subtopic: Natural Resource Extraction Industry
• Index: Business

The basic principle of the railway is one of great antiquity and wooden railways were used in many European mines from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. But the most far-reaching developments, as Dr. Lewis shows in this classic and hard-to-find reissued book, originally published in 1970, took place in British coalfields. Here on the many railways that were developed after 1600 the flanged wheel replaced the crude means of guidance found on the Continent and horses were employed to pull large waggons overland from the pits to rivers and harbours. This book, drawing largely on contemporary documents, discuss the early wooden railways of both Britain and Europe in terms of their operation, labour force, costs, engineering and location and demonstrates how these lines had a twofold importance. Economically, in supplying an adequate transport system, they enabled coal to be mined further from the waterways and thus encouraged a vast expansion in the coal trade; and they also laid the firm foundation on which the Railway Age of the nineteenth century was built.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Plates
• Figures in text
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The early railway scene
• 2 The Leitnagel Hund
• 3 The Hungarian Hund
• 4 Channel- and flanged-rail railways
• 5 Guide-wheel railways
• 6 Flanged-wheel railways in Eastern Europe
• 7 English railways before 1660
• 8 The Newcasde waggonway: its spread on Tyneside and elsewhere
• 9 The Newcastle waggonway: wayleaves and engineering
• 10 The Newcastle waggonway: track
• 11 The Newcasde waggonway: waggons
• 12 The Newcastle waggonway: operating and maintenance
• 13 The Shropshire railway: I
• 14 The Sliropshire railway: II
• 15 Canal railways and the coming of the iron rail
• 16 Miscellaneous railways
• 17 British railways underground
• 18 English railways on the Continent
• Appendix: comparative efficiency of Continental railway vehicles
• Glossary
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Index