APPENDICES 8. Statistics of Comparative Cost of Carriage by Road and Inland Naviga- 9. Table of Canal and Railway Amalgamations, 1846-72 10. Statistics showing Effects of Railways in reducing Canal Freight Rates 11. Statistics showing Extent to which Freight Rates were raised through 12. Illustrations of the Way in which Canals sometimes maintained Com- petition against the Railways. 724 730 731 736 CHAPTER VII DEVELOPMENT OF RAILWAYS It is not easy to trace the origin of railways, but the earliest approximation to the modern railway was, doubtless, the wooden tramroad, the existence and use of which dates far anterior to the modern railway era. The earliest system for the conveyance of coal from inland collieries was by the use of pack-horses, mules or asses, over the backs of which were slung the bags filled with coal; and this method prevailed down to the close of the eighteenth century1. Of course, with the gradual improvement of the roads, some carts had come into use; and the amount of load that could be drawn upon these roads had increased. There still remained, however, the difficulty of bringing the coal from the pit's mouth down to the river or to the road; and to effect this end, wooden tramroads came in time to be laid down. We are informed that, as early as 1555, there was a tram from the west end of the Bridge Gate in Barnard Castle, for the repairing of which the proprietor of the castle left the sum of 20s. The word "tram," at that time, seems to have been used in the north of England and the south of Scotland to describe the special track or road and the truck that ran on it. The truck was drawn along this way by men or horses2. The use of the tramroad in the coal districts, however, for facilitating the conveyance of that heavy commodity, does not seem to have come into public attention until half a century or a century after that time; for a record in the books of one of the free companies in Newcastle, dated 1602, states that from time immemorial the coal carts had been accustomed to carrying eight "baulls" of coal from the pits to the river3, but recently that amount had been reduced 1 Jeans, Jubilee Memorial of the Railway System, p. 5. Jeans says of his work that the facts and figures were all "compiled from official and accredited sources, so that their accuracy may be accepted as unimpeachable.” 2 Gordon, Our Home Railways: How they began and How they are worked, 1, p. 4. Gordon says that his work has been drawn from the original sources, and has been officially approved by the railway authorities as authentic. 3 Eight bolls of coal were equal to 17 cwt. J. T. II. 1 to seven "baulls1." The expense of carrying such heavy loads on poor roads would naturally cause them to seek some other means of conveyance than by cart; but it would seem as if no great change had been made before the middle of the seventeenth century, for a gentleman, writing in 1649, said that many thousand people were employed in the coal trade, some by working in the pit, and others by carrying in waggons and wains to the river Tyne2. Some change, however, had been made, for shortly before that time, perhaps about 1630, a man by the name of Beaumont went north to Newcastle with new kinds of implements for mining the coal, and he it was who introduced the "wooden way" and waggons for carrying the coal from the pits down to the river. He, apparently, had thirty thousand pounds in money with which to begin his improved system of mining the coal and sending it on its way toward the market; but in a few years he had used up all his money and "rode home upon his light horse," having lost all his capital3. By the old system, it was not uncommon for these northern mine-owners to employ five or six hundred horses and carts in this traffic; and hence it was of vast importance to reduce the great expense incurred in keeping so many horses and drivers, in the wear and tear of carts, and in the making and repairing of roads4. It was recognized that the difficulties of the soft roads would be overcome by the adoption and use of the wooden rails upon which to draw the loaded waggons; so that, although Beaumont lost all that he had, others took up his ideas and put them successfully into operation. About 1670 the use of wooden ways seemed to be a common method for conveying the coal from the pits to the river, and those who had lands between the collieries and the river would lease or sell strips of these lands to the mine-owners, upon which the latter would lay their rails from the mines to the bank of the river. Rails of timber were laid down and bulky four-wheeled waggons were made to fit these timbers; so that a keen observer, in 1676, asserted that by this means the carriage was made so easy that one horse would draw down as much as four or five chaldrons of coal at one time, which was an immense benefit to the coal merchants5. 1 Wood, Practical Treatise on Railroads (1825), p. 34. 2 Gray, Chorographia, or a Survey of Newcastle upon Tine (1649), pp. 24–25. 3 Ibid., pp. 24-25; Wood, Practical Treatise on Railroads (1825), p. 35, quoting from Gray; Stretton, A Few Notes on Early Railway History, p. 3. 4 Jeans, op. cit., p. 5. 5 North, Life of the Right Honourable Francis North, Baron of Guilford, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, pp. 136-7. See also Wood, Practical Treatise on Railroads (1825), p. 36, and Cumming, Rail and Tram Roads (1824), p. 7. In Transactions of the Highland Society, vi, p. 6 et seq., Scott gives an account of the origin and In constructing such a road an effort was usually made to have it on a slight decline from the pit's mouth to the place where the coal was to be discharged from the waggons, so that heavy loads might be easily conveyed without a great expenditure of energy by the horses employed in hauling. The rails were not always laid so as to give a uniform declivity throughout the whole length; but they followed more or less the surface of the ground. Where, on part of the road, there was a steep declivity, the speed of the waggon was regulated by a brake attached to the vehicle and managed by the driver. The waggons used had low wheels, for the smoothness of the rails made high wheels unnecessary; and upon the roads of ordinary declination it was easy for a horse to draw three tons of coal from the pit to the river1, although the ordinary load for one horse was nineteen bolls or about forty-two hundredweight2. The economy of the waggon-way over the old way of carrying coal may be noted from the fact that, upon the common roads, the regular load for a horse with a cart was only about seventeen hundredweight3. Of course, the empty waggons had to be drawn back up the incline and the road was made so that horses could meet and pass at certain places. In time the wooden rail had its upper surface worn away; and it is probable that at first such repairs were made by fastening another rail or plank upon the top of the one that was worn. But on some parts of the road where occasional acclivities occurred which could not be levelled, or where sudden windings of the road had to be made, and where, therefore, there would be an unusual amount of friction with the wheels, thin plates of wrought-iron were laid on the wooden rails and fastened to them. The advantages secured by this means in diminishing friction and keeping the rails from wearing would suggest the obvious advantage of having the wooden rails plated throughout with sheet-iron, or covered with iron plates or bars nailed on them. These were called "plateways." When these rails were first faced with iron, we do not know; but the use of such plated rails development of railways, and says that from the records of Ravensworth Castle it would appear that railways came into use there in 1671. See also the petition of Charles Brandling, Lord of the manor of Middleton, owner of coal mines there, and several other owners and occupiers of grounds in Leeds, asking Parliament for permission to lay a waggon-way, from the coal mines, through the grounds of the other petitioners, to Leeds, where Brandling agreed to deliver coal at reduced prices (J., H. of C., XXVIII, p. 57). 1 Cumming, op. cit., p. 9, and Wood, op. cit., pp. 36-41, give full details as to the construction of the road. 2 Cumming, op. cit., p. 8; Wood, op. cit., p. 41. 3 Wood, op. cit., p. 41. Stretton, A Few Notes on Early Railway History, p. 3. |