Difference between revisions of "Railroad"

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A railway (US: railroad) is a form of transport in which vehicles, usually coupled together in groups, travel on rails along fixed routes.

A CSX freight train

History

There is no known date for the 'invention' of railways. Engravings of medieval German miners dragging coal-bearing sleds along rudimentary wooden rails have been found, and the use of wooden rails to guide coal wagons at collieries in the English Midlands is known from the late sixteenth century. In the early seventeenth century the entrepreneur Huntingdon Beaumont built wooden railways to serve collieries at Wollaton, Nottinghamshire (1604) and from 1605 he constructed railways in the important coal-mining district of Tyneside in north-east England, although that venture ruined him financially. In these early railways, waggons were pulled along wooden rails by horses or humans; the main purpose was to move coal (or mineral ores) from mines to navigable waterways.

Because wooden rails wore away quickly, they were replaced by wooden rails with iron plates attached, and later by rails of iron. Cast iron track began to be used in the eighteenth century, although the brittle nature of cast iron meant that such railways could not carry very heavy loads. This consideration also acted against the use of steam engines for motive power. The first steam railway locomotive was designed by Richard Trevithick (1771-1833), a mining engineer from Cornwall, who in 1804 built a locomotive for the Penydarren iron works in south Wales. This proved too heavy for the iron tracks and was converted to a stationary engine. A similar locomotive built by Trevithick for Wylam Colliery in Northumberland also proved too heavy to be of practical use.

The owner of Wylam Colliery, Christopher Blackett, employed William Hedley (1779-1843) as his colliery manager. Hedley was interested in technological change and, aided by another colliery engineer, Timothy Hackworth, he built three steam locomotives between 1813 and 1815. These worked successfully until 1828-29, when they were replaced by two more innovative locomotives, including the famous Puffing Billy. Wylam was a true nursery of railway talent. Hedley and Hackworth were very important railway pioneers, and the village was also the birthplace of George Stephenson (1781-1848).

George Stephenson is justly called 'the father of the railways'. Although he neither invented railways nor steam locomotion, he made huge improvements to the technology of the latter and was a pioneer in the field of civil engineering for large railway projects. An illiterate miner's son, born in a cottage next to the Wylam colliery railway (as a child, his first job was keeping the line clear of stray animals), he learned to read as a young adult at night classes, obtained a post as engineer at Killingworth Colliery, Northumberland, and there built a number of improved locomotives. He designed the Hetton Railway in County Durham in the early 1820s, at that time the longest railway line in the world, linking a colliery to loading staiths (short piers for pouring coal from wagons on to waiting ships) on the River Wear, and then was appointed engineer to the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The S&DR, which opened in 1825, was the world's first public steam-operated railway, linking the coalfields of SW County Durham to the River Tees at Stockton on Tees. This was not purely a colliery line, but allowed other freight, and even passengers, to be carried. Initially it used both locomotive and horse-drawn trains, though later was converted to steam haulage only.

Stephenson's most famous achievement was the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, opened in 1830 and linking two of the fastest-growing cities of Industrial Revolution England. Although this crossed largely flat terrain, the route involved considerable engineering difficulties, including the crossing of the Chat Moss marshland west of Manchester. Stephenson spent much time, money and effort pouring earth and stone into the marsh to create a firm footing for the railway, without success. He decided instead to build the line upon hurdles of brushwood floating on the bog. The line is still in use.

The opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway marked the opening of the 'Railway Age' in Britain and the world. Within three decades most of the major cities in Britain were linked by rail, and railway networks had begun to spread acoss the deveoped nations of the world.

Gauges

The gauge of a railway is the distance between the inside edges of the top of the rails. Trains built to operate on a railway of a given gauge are unable to operate on railways of a different gauge (unless special provision is made to allow this).

The history of railways is replete with railways being built to a variety of gauges, which has led to numerous problems including limiting the viability of individual railways.

A gauge of four feet eight and a half inches (1435 mm) is generally known as standard gauge, and is widely used around the world. Gauges smaller than this are referred to as narrow gauge and larger gauges are referred to as broad gauge.^[1]

Narrow-gauge lines are usually cheaper to construct and have often been used for short industrial lines, connecting branch lines, and places where it would not be economic to construct a more substantial line. However, some narrow gauge lines, such as those of Queensland and South Africa, are built to the same standards as standard gauge lines and perform just like standard-gauge lines.

Trains

For a more detailed treatment, see Train.

Train emerging from the famous tunnels in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania. This photo illustrates how a good deal of railway freight is hauled these days -- in intermodal shipping containers

The vehicles that operate on railways are known as trains, and usually comprise one or more locomotives hauling a number of vehicles.

Further reading

• Railroad Gauge Width, a comprehensive list of railway gauges and countries where they are and were used.
• Armstrong, John H. The Railroad: What It Is, What It Does. 4th edition, 1998, Simmons-Boardman Books. ISBN 0-911382-04-6
• Jack Simmons & Gordon Biddle (eds), The Oxford Companion to British Railway History (Oxford 1997)

Notes

1. ↑ narrow gauge and at broad gauge at AskOxford.com