subscribe
Apple | spotify | Amazon | Player.FM | tuning
cast box | Podurama | Podcast Republic | RSS | Patreon
podcast transcript
Over the past 200 years, railways have been one of the most important means of transportation. Railroads helped create the modern world. People and goods can be transported quickly and over long distances at low cost.
But most people would be shocked to learn that railroads predate the development of locomotives. In fact, the earliest evidence of the use of some kind of pre-fabricated track dates back thousands of years before the first locomotives.
… Even as new and faster forms of transportation are being developed, railways are expected to continue to have a bright future.
Learn more about railroads, history, and the future in this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
When most people think about railways, it usually begins and ends with locomotives…which makes perfect sense. This is by far the most popular form of rail system today.
But if you think about it a little, there are other types of rail transportation. Trolleys and monorails come to mind, which are similar to trains but different from them.
This episode isn't about locomotives. It's not about train engines, but they certainly play an important role in rail transportation. Locomotives came about with the advent of steam engines, which we covered in a previous episode.
This episode is about rails, and tracks more generally. Unknown to most people, track and rail predate locomotives by centuries, although they were of limited use until the development of the steam engine.
The early predecessors of rail were commonly called tracks. Tracks differ from roads or trails in that they are built specifically for a specific type of transportation over a specific distance. It may seem a little ambiguous, but the idea is that it is something that is created, rather than something that is in the ground, through continued use.
The first track discovered is Post Track. It was discovered in the Somerset Levels in England and dates back to 3838 BC, almost 6000 years ago. It was a series of wooden planks built through the wetlands to allow people to easily walk through them.
If this sounds a long way from railways, you're not wrong, but it does identify many aspects of the railway system. These were tracks intentionally built to facilitate transportation (in this case, walking).
Something similar to the more familiar railways appeared in Greece in the 6th century BC. This is Diolkos. Diolkos was a land shortcut for ships to cross the Isthmus of Corinth. The Isthmus of Corinth is a 6.3 km or 3.9 mile wide strip of land that connects the Peloponnese with the rest of Greece.
In ancient times, a canal was proposed, but never built. Instead, ships were moved overland to avoid the long and dangerous sea journey around the peninsula.
Diolkos was a rudimentary track used to move boats over the isthmus. The same effect was achieved by using grooves in the road instead of rails.
The introduction of rails was an innovation that appeared in the early 16th century.
The first mention of the railway was in connection with the Reisszug, a cable car that ascended to Hohensalzburg Castle in Salzburg, Austria. The railings were made of wood, and carts were pulled by horse-drawn ropes to transport goods to the castle.
For those who haven't heard of this term, a cable car is a railway that goes up a slope, such as a hill.
…and the fun fact is that the Reisszug is still in operation today, albeit without wooden railings.
This is a good opportunity to explain what's special about rails and what their purpose is. How about building a road instead of a railway? Wouldn't it be easier to level the ground than to build rails?
There are several advantages to running vehicles on rails instead of on the ground. The biggest of these is friction reduction. Smooth wheels on smooth rails have less friction than wheels running on ground. Less friction makes it easier to pull a cart, and allows you to pull a heavier load with the same amount of energy.
Second, rails provide a defined route for vehicles. Because the vehicle is on the tracks, you know exactly where it will go. Finally, replacing a single section of rail can be much easier than repaving or repaving an entire road.
These early railroads were known as wagonways because they were usually horse-drawn carriages.
Wagons were very popular in the mines. Draft animals pulled carts full of very heavy ore out of the mine. It began appearing in the late 16th century and quickly spread throughout Europe.
Some wagons used in British coal mines could more than quadruple the amount of pull per horse, pulling between 10 and 13 tons of coal per trip, dramatically increasing the efficiency of overall mining operations.
But wooden wheels running on wooden rails were far from optimal.
The next big advancement came with the development of metal rails.
The first use of metal in rails was in 1760 at the Coalbrookdale Iron Works, which struck iron plates on top of wooden rails. The strength of simple wooden rails has been increased and friction has been reduced.
By 1767, fully cast iron rails were produced, which were much stronger than wood.
In 1787, John Curr, a coal mine manager in Sheffield, England, developed a flanged iron rail with small L-shaped ridges on the outside of the rail. This is designed to keep the wheels on the track and prevent the wagon from derailing. This is known as plate rail or plateway.
In 1789, William Jessop came up with another innovation. Instead of plate rails with flanges to keep the wheels in place, he created what he called edge rails. The edge rails were flat rails without flanges. In this system the flange was actually on the wheel.
Until the 19th century, L-shaped plate rails with flanges and edge rails without flanges existed side by side, but eventually edge rails and flange wheels were proven to be superior, and are similar to the form of rail that exists today. .
In 1803, Jessop opened the Surrey Railway, which carried passengers to south London. The Surry Iron Railway used a plate rail system, and when there were complaints about flanges sticking out, the roads were raised to level with the flanges. This is similar to what is done today when railways cross public roads.
While rails were improving, cast iron was not an ideal material for making rails. It was brittle, could only be made in short lengths, was prone to rusting and needed frequent replacement.
In 1820, John Birkinshaw of Bedlington Ironworks created the first wrought iron rails, which were much better but still not optimal.
It was not until 1860, with the development of the Bessemer process for making steel, that stronger, more durable steel rails became available.
The biggest change in railways and railways was the introduction of steam-driven locomotive engines. The first steam engines were introduced in the early 19th century and spread quickly.
This changed everything about railroads. Before steam engines, the speeds and distances at which something could travel on rails were very short. Railroads were used to move heavy loads in mines and factories, but that was about it. Each system was independent of the other.
But locomotives now allowed people and goods to move faster and farther. Entire cities could be linked together, which meant different railways could be linked together.
The problem is that every railroad has different types of tracks. It was not simply a difference between a plate and an edge rail. There were also track gauge issues.
Gauge is nothing more than the distance between two tracks, and everyone has their own track gauge. This means that trains from one railway cannot run on another railway.
In 1825, British engineer George Stephenson proposed a railway standard. The gauge of the track is 4 feet 8 inches and 1½ inches, or 1,435 millimeters.
However, it was not universally adopted.
Isamard Kingdom Brunel, arguably the greatest engineer of the 19th century and featured in a previous episode, built the Great Western Railway using a broad gauge measuring 7 feet 1/4 inches, or 2,140 millimeters.
The problem was that there were no such standards. The UK needed some sort of standard for all tracks for interoperability and consistency. In 1845, the Royal Commission on Railway Gauges was convened to set standards for British railways.
I was leaning toward Brunel's wide gauge, but eventually decided on Stevenson's narrow gauge. Today, the 1,435 mm standard gauge is used on 70% of the world's railways. There are many different track gauges available around the world, but most countries only have one or two. Different gauges are classified into wide gauge and narrow gauge based on their width relative to the standard gauge.
As the railroad began to expand, new problems arose. One of the biggest problems was how to handle multiple trains on a limited number of tracks. This led to the development of railway switches.
A switch is a movable part of a track that can switch a train from one track to another.
The first switches were used on early wooden rails in mines. However, the first iron rail switch was developed in 1797 by John Curr, the same man who developed plate rail.
His system was widely used until 1808. Spring-loaded switches were patented by British engineer Charles Fox in 1838, which allowed for smoother transitions when moving tracks.
Switches were eventually electrified in the late 19th century, allowing for automatic and remote switching.
The average train track did not change much for most of the early 20th century. However, as high-speed rail became more popular, the tracks on which trains ran needed to change.
One of the changes was the continuously welded rails. If you've ever ridden a train or watched a movie with passengers on a train, you've probably heard the sound of the train clicking on the rails. The sound is caused by the short gaps between the individual rails of the track.
Continuously welded rails eliminate noise and provide a much smoother ride.
The wooden ties supporting the rails were replaced with concrete ties. This provided more support, reduced sound, and kept the rails aligned better than wood, which is important for continuous welded rails.
Perhaps the biggest change is the creation of a sloped curve.
On traditional railways, the curve was flat, which was fine considering the speed at which most trains travel. But these flat curves become more dangerous the faster the train moves. At very high speeds, the force of a train rounding a curve can cause it to derail.
Just like on a racetrack, sloping curves helps trains stay on the track when traveling at high speeds.
High-speed rail is not even at the cutting edge of rail technology. Maglev railway proposes installing electromagnets on the rails to levitate them above the tracks, creating no friction at all. Without friction, speeds much higher than today's fastest trains could theoretically be achieved.
But I'll leave the magnetic levitation for the next episode.
Most people think that rail transportation began with locomotives, but it's actually much older. Although technology goes back centuries, it was locomotives that made rail and rail travel ubiquitous. Rail travel is still popular around the world today and, given some of the technology available, will probably continue to be so for centuries to come.
The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.
Associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kieffer.
Today's review comes from CraigCode1010, a listener on Apple Podcasts in the US. he writes
Most of the good episodes were ruined.
Good podcast ruined by too many ads at the beginning, and gave me a stroke in my self-esteem section at the end (read your great review)
Thanks, Craig! Obviously, not every review I read hurt my ego.
Remember, if you leave a review or send us a boostgram, we may read it on air.