RAILWAYS. If cotton spinning were the greatest commercial phenomenon of the first quarter of the present century, railways may unquestionably be said to be so for the second. Nothing else has been attended by such vast (and in many respects beneficial) results.
Wooden railways or tramways were intro duced in the collieries of the north of England in the early part of the seventeenth century. They were adopted in order to reduce the labour of drawing coals from the pits to the places of shipment in the neighbourhood of Newcastle-upon.Tyne. They consisted, in the first instance, simply of pieces of wood imbedded in the ordinary road, in such a manner as to form wheel-tracks for the carts or waggons employed. An improved form was afterwards adopted, by laying the wooden rails on transverse sleepers. The vehicles used upon these wooden railways were generally waggons, containing from two to three tons of coal, mounted upon small wheels. The wheels were provided with a flange or projecting rim, which, by coming in contact with the side of the rail, retained the waggon upon the railroad.
• About the year 1707 iron plates were laid upon the wooden rails on a railivay at the Colebrook Dale iron works. Some time after the experiment at Colebrook Dale, cast-iron rails, with an upright flange, were brought into rise at the colliery of the Duke of Norfolk, near Sheffield, in 1770. Originally they were fixed upon cross sleepers of wood, like those used to support wooden rails ; but about the year 1793 blocks of stone were introduced as supports, instead of the wooden sleepers. Various inconveniences attendant on these plate-railways led to the use of edge•railways, which have now almost entirely superseded the previous form. The fast edge-railway of any considerable extent was completed in 1801 for the conveyance of slate from the quarries of Lord Penrhyn. The decided advantages of edge-rails were so well appreciated by the coal owners of Northumberland and Durham, that they were adopted extensively by them within a few years after the successful experiment at Penrhyn. Many successive varieties luive been introduced in the form of the rails ; but the greatest improvement was se invention, in 1820, of an efficient and cheap method of rolling iron bars suitable for rails and similar purposes. The fibrous texture of wrought
iron makes it far less likely to break when subjected to concussion than cast-iron, and the sectional form used is such as to render bending improbable.
The application of the steam-engine to the purposes of locomotion was suggested in one of the patents of Watt: but it does not appear that either he or any other inventor carried their ideas into practice until about 1802, when Messrs. Trevithiek and Vivian patented la high-pressure engine, which, by its simpli 'city and compactness, was admirably adapted for locomotive purposes. Within a few years they built several carriages, one of which, at least, was for use on a common road. In 1805 they made some interesting experiments with a locomotive on a tramway near Merthyr Tydvil, and thereby proved the practicability of their plan. Engineers at first thought that the wheels would not hold or bite on the rails, without some other contrivances ; but those fears have been dissipated.
Shortly before the completion of the Liver pool and Manchester railway, the directors decided that horse traction would be too slow for the respiirements of the traffic ; and they determined to try locomotives. They offered a premium of 5001. for the best to be produced which would fulfil certain conditions, of which some were that it should not emit smoke, should draw three times its own weight at the rate of ten miles per hour, should be sup ported on springs, not exceed six tons weight, or four tons and a half if on only four wheels, and should not cost more than 550/. The trial was fixed for October, 1829, when four steam locomotives were produced, one of which was withdrawn at the commencement of the experiment. Of the other three, the Novelty, by Messrs. Braithwaite and Ericson, and the Sans Parcel, by Mr. Hackworth, fished in some of the conditions. Tho rema+ning engine, the Rocket, was constructed by Robert Stephenson and Mr. Booth, of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and succeeded in performing more than was stipulated for. The most marked improvement in Stephenson's Locomotive was the use of a tubular boiler instead of a largo flue.