Connecticut western news., 1871-07-14
The First Railways.

1uo urSL HALFWAY, pIopoI1y SO OHIAAOus was made some two hundred years ago, and consisted of rude line of wooden or iron rails, laid down to ease the draught upon horses drawing coal wagons from the collieries in the north of England. Two hundred years ago, Lord Keeper North, an eminent British lawyer, who wrote his own life, stated that coals from the mines near Newcastle upon-Tyne were conveyed to the banks of the river "by laying rails of timber exactly straight and parallel; and bulky carts were made, with four rollers, fitting made so easy that one horse could draw four or five chaldrons of coal" As each chaldron contains twenty-five and half hundreds, or about one long ton and a quarter, the total burthen would be conveyed. We see on our street passen- ger cars what an immense weight two mules can convey, with apparent ease, over the iron rails.
 When once there was railway, the invention of locomotives to work it was inevitable. The first of the wooden MT. Beaumont, who had collieries in UA1C HUI OL 1ASItbuu 1hOy AO- mained unimproved for long time, was fastened upon them, and the wagon wheels were made of cast iron, hollowed in the form of metal pulley, that they might fit the rounded surface of the rail. This immensely increased the facility and lessened the draught. The first regular iron railroad was laid down III UT kl~- middle of England. For time, after this, there was @ cast-iron rail, with fanges cast on the tire of the wheel and on the rail. One MT. Outram intro duced stone props instead of timber, for supporting the ends and joinings of the rails-just as at present. Generally adopted, the term "Outram roads" came to distinguish them, which was abridged into t7GanrO0dS.
 It was found that on good tramroads, one horse could do the work of forty on the common road. Not until 1920 was the novelty of wrought-iron rails intro duced. Steel rails, now general, are of comparatively recent adoption. One suggestion, by the father of Miss Maria Edgeworth, the Irish novelist, was that the wagons could be impe1fsd along the tramways, like ships before the wind, by sails instead of horses. It was tried, and did not succeed. In 1759 James Watt Mo~qht of applying the power of the steam engine to moving wheel-car- riages on tramroads, but did nothing in it. Ten years later, London linen draper took out patent for moving wheel carriages by steam. In 1763, 8 Frenchman, named Cognot, exhibited to Marshal de Sake real steam carriage, which, however, like the man with the steam leg, exercised such enormous force that, once in motion, knocked down walls and houses. Itis still preserved ill one of the public museums of Paris. In 1914, George Stephenson's first steam locomotives ran upon tramway, and drew eight carriages, of thirty tons weight, at 8 speed of four miles an hour. He built the London and Manchester Railroad, sixteen years later, and lived to see railway locomotion at the rate of from fifty to sixty miles per hour-the former being the ordinary express speed on the British railways. It is not about him, or about English railwayism, that desire to write, but about railroads in America, and these have claim on our attention, inasmuch as Oliver Evans, an American, invented, in 1772, steam engine to travel on common roads, and, in 1787, obtained from the State of Maryland the exclusive right to make and run steam carriages.
 It may be new to many readers that the first land carriage propelled by steam in America was constructed in Philadel- phia, in 1903 A, by Mr. Evans. It may also be news to the general public that the first locomotive railway in any coun- try constructed especially and exclusively for the use of locomotives, was made to connect Charleston, s. O., with the Savannah River. Six miles of this road were open and worked in 1929-twelve months before the completion of Stephen sons Liverpool and Manchester Rail- road.