Introduction

Transport or transportation is the movement of humans, animals and goods from one location to another. In other words the
action of transport is defined as a particular movement of an organism or thing from a point A to the Point B. Modes of
transport include air, land (railand road), water, cable, pipeline and space. The field can be divided
into infrastructure, vehicles and operations. Transport is important because it enables trade between people, which is
essential for the development of civilizations.
Transport infrastructure consists of the fixed installations,
including roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals and pipelines and terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus
stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fueling docks and fuel stations) and seaports. Terminals
may be used both for interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance.
Vehicles traveling on these networks may
include automobiles, bicycles, buses, trains, trucks, helicopters, watercraft, spacecraft and aircraft.
Operations deal with the way the vehicles are operated, and the procedures set for this purpose, including financing,
legalities, and policies. In the transport industry, operations and ownership of infrastructure can be either public or private,
depending on the country and mode.
Passenger transport may be public, where operators provide scheduled services, or private. Freight transport has become
focused on containerization, although bulk transport is used for large volumes of durable items. Transport plays an important
part in economic growth and globalization, but most types cause air pollution and use large amounts of land. While it is
heavily subsidized by governments, good planning of transport is essential to make traffic flow and restrain urban sprawl.

History of transport
The history of transport is largely one of technological innovation. Advances in technology have allowed people to travel
farther, explore more territory, and expand their influence over larger and larger areas. Even in ancient times, new tools
such as foot coverings, skis, and snowshoes lengthened the distances that could be travelled. As new inventions and
discoveries were applied to transport problems, travel time decreased while the ability to move more and larger loads
increased. Innovation continues as transport researchers are working to find new ways to reduce costs and increase transport
efficiency.
 Old transportation
(old time train)
The history of rail transport began in 6th century BC in Ancient Greece. It can be divided up into several discrete periods
defined by the principal means of track material and motive power used.

Ancient systems
Evidence indicates that there was 6 to 8.5 km long Diolkos paved trackway, which transported boats across the Isthmus of
Corinth in Greece from around 600 BC. Wheeled vehicles pulled by men and animals ran in grooves in limestone, which
provided the track element, preventing the wagons from leaving the intended route. The Diolkos was in use for over 650
years, until at least the 1st century AD.] The paved trackways were also later built in Roman Egypt.
Pre-steam
Wooden rails introduced

Reisszug, as it appears today

In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug, a funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Castle in
Austria. The line originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope and was operated by human or animal power, through
a treadwheel. The line still exists and is operational, although in updated form and is possibly the oldest operational railway.

Minecart shown in De Re Metallica(1556). The guide pin fits in a groove between two wooden planks.
Wagonways (or tramways), with wooden rails and horse-drawn traffic, are known to have been used in the 1550s to
facilitate transportation of ore tubs to and from mines. They soon became popular in Europe and an example of their operation
was illustrated by Georgius Agricola (image left) in his 1556 work De re metallica. This line used "Hund" carts with
unflanged wheels running on wooden planks and a vertical pin on the truck fitting into the gap between the planks to keep it
going the right way. The miners called the wagons Hunde ("dogs") from the noise they made on the tracks. There are
many references to wagonways in central Europe in the 16th century.
A wagonway was introduced to England by German miners at Caldbeck, Cumbria, possibly in the 1560s. A wagonway was
built at Prescot, near Liverpool, sometime around 1600, possibly as early as 1594. Owned by Philip Layton, the line
carried coal from a pit near Prescot Hall to a terminus about half a mile away. A funicular railway was made
at Broseley in Shropshire some time before 1604. This carried coal for James Clifford from his mines down to the river
Severn to be loaded onto barges and carried to riverside towns. The Wollaton Wagonway, completed in 1604 by Huntingdon
Beaumont, has sometimes erroneously been cited as the earliest British railway. It ran
from Strelley to Wollaton near Nottingham.
The Middleton Railway in Leeds, which was built in 1758, later became the world's oldest operational railway (other than
funiculars), albeit now in an upgraded form. In 1764, the first railway in America was built in Lewiston, New York.
Metal rails introduced
The introduction of steam engines for powering blast air to blast furnaces led to a large increase in British iron production
after the mid 1750s.
In the late 1760s, the Coalbrookdale Company began to fix plates of cast iron to the upper surface of wooden rails, which
increased their durability and load-bearing ability. At first only balloon loops could be used for turning wagons, but later,
movable points were introduced that allowed passing loops to be created.

A replica of a "Little Eaton Tramway" wagon, the tracks are plateways.

A system was introduced in which unflanged wheels ran on L-shaped metal plates – these became known as plateways. John
Curr, a Sheffield colliery manager, invented this flanged rail in 1787, though the exact date of this is disputed. The plate
rail was taken up by Benjamin Outram for wagonways serving his canals, manufacturing them at his Butterley ironworks. In
1803, William Jessop opened the Surrey Iron Railway, a double track plateway, sometimes erroneously cited as world's
first public railway, in south London.

Cast iron fishbelly edge rail manufactured by Outram at the Butterley Company ironworks for the Cromford and High
Peak Railway(1831). These are smooth edgerails for wheels with flanges.
In 1789, William Jessop had introduced a form of all-iron edge rail and flanged wheels for an extension to the Charnwood
Forest Canal at Nanpantan, Loughborough, Leicestershire. In 1790, Jessop and his partner Outram began to manufacture
edge-rails. Jessop became a partner in the Butterley Company in 1790. The first public edgeway (thus also first public
railway) built was the Lake Lock Rail Road in 1796. Although the primary purpose of the line was to carry coal, it also
carried passengers.
These two systems of constructing iron railways, the "L" plate-rail and the smooth edge-rail, continued to exist side by side
into the early 19th century. The flanged wheel and edge-rail eventually proved its superiority and became the standard for
railways.
Cast iron was not a satisfactory material for rails because it was brittle and broke under heavy loads. The wrought
iron invented by John Birkinshaw in 1820 replaced cast iron. Wrought iron (usually simply referred to as "iron") was
a ductile material that could undergo considerable deformation before breaking, making it more suitable for iron rails. But
wrought iron was expensive to produce until Henry Cortpatented the puddling process in 1784. In 1783, Cort also patented
the rolling process, which was 15 times faster at consolidating and shaping iron than hammering. These processes greatly
lowered the cost of producing iron and iron rails. The next important development in iron production was hot blast developed
by James Beaumont Neilson(patented 1828), which considerably reduced the amount of coke (fuel) or charcoal needed to
produce pig iron. Wrought iron was a soft material that contained included slag or dross. The softness and dross tended to
make iron rails distort and delaminate and they typically lasted less than 10 years in use, and sometimes as little as one
year under high traffic. All these developments in the production of iron eventually led to replacement of composite
wood/iron rails with superior all-iron rails.
The introduction of the Bessemer process, enabling steel to be made inexpensively, led to the era of great expansion of
railways that began in the late 1860s. Steel rails lasted several times longer than iron. Steel rails made heavier
locomotives possible, allowing for longer trains and improving the productivity of railroads. The Bessemer process introduced
nitrogen into the steel, which caused the steel to become brittle with age. The open hearth furnace began to replace the
Bessemer process near the end of 19th century, improving the quality of steel and further reducing costs. Steel
completely replaced the use of iron in rails, becoming standard for all railways.

Steam power introduced

James Watt, a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, greatly improved the steam engine of Thomas Newcomen, hitherto
used to pump water out of mines. Watt developed a reciprocating engine in 1769, capable of powering a wheel. Although the
Watt engine powered cotton mills and a variety of machinery, it was a large stationary engine. It could not be otherwise:
the state of boiler technology necessitated the use of low pressure steam acting upon a vacuum in the cylinder; this required
a separate condenser and an air pump. Nevertheless, as the construction of boilers improved, Watt investigated the use of
high-pressure steam acting directly upon a piston. This raised the possibility of a smaller engine, that might be used to
power a vehicle and he patented a design for a steam locomotive in 1784. His employee William Murdoch produced a working
model of a self-propelled steam carriage in that year.

A replica of Trevithick's engine at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea

The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built in the United Kingdom in 1804 by Richard Trevithick, a
British engineer born in Cornwall. This used high-pressure steam to drive the engine by one power stroke. The
transmission system employed a large flywheel to even out the action of the piston rod. On 21 February 1804, the world's
first steam-powered railway journey took place when Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the
tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. Trevithick later demonstrated a locomotive
operating upon a piece of circular rail track in Bloomsbury, London, the Catch Me Who Can, but never got beyond the
experimental stage with railway locomotives, not least because his engines were too heavy for the cast-iron plateway track
then in use.

The Salamanca locomotive

The first commercially successful steam locomotive was Matthew Murray's rack locomotive Salamanca built for
the Middleton Railway in Leeds in 1812. This twin-cylinder locomotive was not heavy enough to break the edge-rails track
and solved the problem of adhesion by a cog-wheelusing teeth cast on the side of one of the rails. Thus it was also the
first rack railway.
This was followed in 1813 by the locomotive Puffing Billy built by Christopher Blackett and William Hedley for
the Wylam Colliery Railway, the first successful locomotive running by adhesion only. This was accomplished by the
distribution of weight between a number of wheels. Puffing Billy is now on display in the Science Museum in London, making
it the oldest locomotive in existence.

The Locomotion at Darlington Railway Centre and Museum

In 1814 George Stephenson, inspired by the early locomotives of Trevithick, Murray and Hedley, persuaded the manager
of the Killingworth colliery where he worked to allow him to build a steam-powered machine. Stephenson played a pivotal
role in the development and widespread adoption of the steam locomotive. His designs considerably improved on the work of
the earlier pioneers. He built the locomotive Blücher, also a successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive. In 1825 he built
the locomotive Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in the north east of England, which became the first
public steam railway in the world, although it used both horse power and steam power on different runs. In 1829, he built
the locomotive Rocket, which entered in and won the Rainhill Trials. This success led to Stephenson establishing his
company as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives for railways in Great Britain and Ireland, the United States, and
much of Europe. The first public railway which used only steam locomotives, all the time, was Liverpool and Manchester
Railway, built in 1830.
Steam power continued to be the dominant power system in railways around the world for more than a century.

Electric power introduced

The first known electric locomotive was built in 1837 by chemist Robert Davidson of Aberdeen in Scotland, and it was
powered by galvanic cells (batteries). Thus it was also the earliest battery electric locomotive. Davidson later built a
larger locomotive named Galvani, exhibited at the Royal Scottish Society of Arts Exhibition in 1841. The seven-ton vehicle
had two direct-drive reluctance motors, with fixed electromagnets acting on iron bars attached to a wooden cylinder on each
axle, and simple commutators. It hauled a load of six tons at four miles per hour (6 kilometers per hour) for a distance of
one and a half miles (2.4 kilometres). It was tested on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in September of the following
year, but the limited power from batteries prevented its general use. It was destroyed by railway workers, who saw it as
a threat to their job security.

Lichterfelde tram, 1882

Werner von Siemens demonstrated an electric railway in 1879 in Berlin. The world's first electric tram line, Gross-
Lichterfelde Tramway, opened in Lichterfelde near Berlin, Germany, in 1881. It was built by Siemens. The tram ran on
180 Volt DC, which was supplied by running rails. In 1891 the track was equipped with an overhead wire and the line was
extended to Berlin-Lichterfelde West station. The Volk's Electric Railway opened in 1883 in Brighton, England. The
railway is still operational, thus making it the oldest operational electric railway in the world. Also in 1883, Mödling and
Hinterbrühl Tram opened near Vienna in Austria. It was the first tram line in the world in regular service powered from
an overhead line. Five years later, in the US electric trolleys were pioneered in 1888 on the Richmond Union Passenger
Railway, using equipment designed by Frank J. Sprague.

Baltimore & Ohio electric engine

The first use of electrification on a main line was on a four-mile stretch of the Baltimore Belt Line of the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1895 connecting the main portion of the B&O to the new line to New York through a series of
tunnels around the edges of Baltimore's downtown.
Electricity quickly became the power supply of choice for subways, abetted by the Sprague's invention of multiple-unit train
control in 1897. By early 1900s most street railways were electrified.
The first practical AC electric locomotive was designed by Charles Brown, then working for Oerlikon, Zürich. In 1891,
Brown had demonstrated long-distance power transmission, using three-phase AC, between a hydro-electric plant at Lauffen
am Neckar and Frankfurt am Main West, a distance of 280 km. Using experience he had gained while working for Jean
Heilmann on steam-electric locomotive designs, Brown observed that three-phase motors had a higher power-to-weight ratio
than DC motors and, because of the absence of a commutator, were simpler to manufacture and maintain. However, they
were much larger than the DC motors of the time and could not be mounted in underfloor bogies: they could only be carried
within locomotive bodies.
In 1894, Hungarian engineer Kálmán Kandó developed a new type 3-phase asynchronous electric drive motors and generators
for electric locomotives. Kandó's early 1894 designs were first applied in a short three-phase AC tramway in Evian-les-
Bains (France), which was constructed between 1896 and 1898.
In 1896, Oerlikon installed the first commercial example of the system on the Lugano Tramway. Each 30-tonne locomotive
had two 110 kW (150 hp) motors run by three-phase 750 V 40 Hz fed from double overhead lines. Three-phase motors
run at constant speed and provide regenerative braking, and are well suited to steeply graded routes, and the first main-line
three-phase locomotives were supplied by Brown (by then in partnership with Walter Boveri) in 1899 on the
40 km Burgdorf—Thun line, Switzerland.

A prototype of a Ganz AC electric locomotive in Valtellina, Italy, 1901

Italian railways were the first in the world to introduce electric traction for the entire length of a main line rather than
just a short stretch. The 106 km Valtellina line was opened on 4 September 1902, designed by Kandó and a team from the
Ganz works. The electrical system was three-phase at 3 kV 15 Hz. In 1918, Kandó invented and developed the rotary
phase converter, enabling electric locomotives to use three-phase motors whilst supplied via a single overhead wire, carrying
the simple industrial frequency (50 Hz) single phase AC of the high voltage national networks.[46]
An important contribution to the wider adoption of AC traction came from SNCF of France after World War II. The
company conducted trials at 50 Hz, and established it as a standard. Following SNCF's successful trials, 50 Hz (now also
called industrial frequency) was adopted as standard for main lines across the world.

Diesel power introduced

Diagram of Priestman Oil Engine from The Steam engine and gas and oil engines (1900) by John Perry
Earliest recorded examples of an internal combustion engine for railway use included a prototype designed by William Dent
Priestman, which was examined by Sir William Thomson in 1888 who described it as a "[Priestman oil engine] mounted upon
a truck which is worked on a temporary line of rails to show the adaptation of a petroleum engine for locomotive
purposes.". In 1894, a 20 hp (15 kW) two axle machine built by Priestman Brothers was used on the Hull Docks.
In 1906, Rudolf Diesel, Adolf Klose and the steam and diesel engine manufacturer Gebrüder Sulzer founded Diesel-Sulzer-
Klose GmbH to manufacture diesel-powered locomotives. Sulzer had been manufacturing diesel engines since 1898. The
Prussian State Railways ordered a diesel locomotive from the company in 1909. The world's first diesel-powered locomotive
was operated in the summer of 1912 on the Winterthur–Romanshorn railway in Switzerland, but was not a commercial
success. The locomotive weight was 95 tonnes and the power was 883 kW with a maximum speed of 100 km/h. Small
numbers of prototype diesel locomotives were produced in a number of countries through the mid-1920s.

Swiss & German co-production: world's first functional diesel–electric railcar 1914
A significant breakthrough occurred in 1914, when Hermann Lemp, a General Electric electrical engineer, developed and
patented a reliable direct current electrical control system (subsequent improvements were also patented by Lemp). Lemp's
design used a single lever to control both engine and generator in a coordinated fashion, and was the prototype for
all diesel–electric locomotive control systems. In 1914, world's first functional diesel–electric railcars were produced for
the Königlich-Sächsische Staatseisenbahnen (Royal Saxon State Railways) by Waggonfabrik Rastatt with electric
equipment from Brown, Boveri & Cie and diesel engines from Swiss Sulzer AG. They were classified as DET 1 and DET
2 [de]. The first regular use of diesel–electric locomotives was in switching (shunter) applications. General Electric
produced several small switching locomotives in the 1930s (the famous "44-tonner" switcher was introduced in 1940)
Westinghouse Electric and Baldwin collaborated to build switching locomotives starting in 1929.
In 1929, the Canadian National Railways became the first North American railway to use diesels in mainline service with
two units, 9000 and 9001, from Westinghouse.
Modern transport
(high speed rail)
High-speed rail

The Tōkaidō Shinkansen high-speed line in Japan, with Mount Fuji in the background. The Tokaido Shinkansen was the
world's first high-speed rail line.
High-speed rail (HSR) is a type of rail transport that operates significantly faster than traditional rail traffic, using an
integrated system of specialized rolling stock and dedicated tracks. While there is no single standard that applies
worldwide, new lines in excess of 250 kilometres per hour (160 mph) and existing lines in excess of 200 kilometres per
hour (120 mph) are widely considered to be high-speed, with some extending the definition to include lower speeds in areas
for which these speeds still represent significant improvements. The first such system began operations in Japan in 1964
and was widely known as the bullet train. High-speed trains normally operate on standard gauge tracks of continuously
welded rail on grade-separated right-of-way that incorporates a large turning radius in its design.
Many countries have developed high-speed rail to connect major cities, including Austria, Belgium, China, Finland, France,
Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Morocco, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain,
Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan. Only in Europe does HSR cross international borders.
China had 29,000 kilometres (18,000 mi) of HSR as of December 2018, accounting for two-thirds of the world's total.

History by country
Europe

First railway line by country

Belgium
Main article: History of rail transport in Belgium
Belgium took the lead in the Industrial Revolution on the Continent starting in the 1820s. It provided an ideal model for
showing the value of the railways for speeding the industrial revolution. After splitting from the Netherlands in 1830, the
new country decided to stimulate industry. It planned and funded a simple cross-shaped system that connected the major
cities, ports and mining areas and linked to neighboring countries. Unusually, the Belgian state became a major contributor
to early rail development and championed the creation of a national network with no duplication of lines. Belgium thus became
the railway center of the region.
The system was built along British lines, often with British engineers doing the planning. Profits were low but the
infrastructure necessary for rapid industrial growth was put in place. The first railway in Belgium, running from
northern Brussels to Mechelen, was completed in May 1835.
Britain
Main article: History of rail transport in Great Britain

Rail Passengers in Great Britain from 1829–2018, showing the rapid rise in passenger numbers in the 19th century
Early developments
The earliest railway in Britain was a wagonway system, a horse drawn wooden rail system, used by German miners
at Caldbeck, Cumbria, England, perhaps from the 1560s. A wagonway was built at Prescot, near Liverpool, sometime
around 1600, possibly as early as 1594. Owned by Philip Layton, the line carried coal from a pit near Prescot Hall to a
terminus about half a mile away. On 26 July 1803, Jessop opened the Surrey Iron Railway, south of London erroneously
considered first railway in Britain, also a horse-drawn one. It was not a railway in the modern sense of the word, as it
functioned like a turnpike road. There were no official services, as anyone could bring a vehicle on the railway by paying a
toll.
The Middleton Railway in Leeds, which was built in 1758, later became the world's oldest operational railway (other than
funiculars), albeit now in an upgraded form. In 1764, the first railway in the Americas was built in Lewiston, New
York.[17]The first passenger Horsecar or tram, Swansea and Mumbles Railway was opened
between Swansea and Mumbles in Wales in 1807. Horse remained preferable mode for tram transport even after arrival of
steam engines, well till the end of 19th century. The major reason was that the horse-cars were clean as compared to
steam driven trams which caused smoke in city streets.
In 1812, Oliver Evans, an American engineer and inventor, published his vision of what steam railways could become, with
cities and towns linked by a network of long distance railways plied by speedy locomotives, greatly speeding up personal
travel and goods transport. Evans specified that there should be separate sets of parallel tracks for trains going in
different directions. However, conditions in the infant United States did not enable his vision to take hold. This vision had its
counterpart in Britain, where it proved to be far more influential. William James, a rich and influential surveyor and land
agent, was inspired by the development of the steam locomotive to suggest a national network of railways. It seems
likely[58] that in 1808 James attended the demonstration running of Richard Trevithick's steam locomotive Catch me who
can in London; certainly at this time he began to consider the long-term development of this means of transport. He proposed
a number of projects that later came to fruition and is credited with carrying out a survey of the Liverpool and Manchester
Railway. Unfortunately he became bankrupt and his schemes were taken over by George Stephenson and others. However,
he is credited by many historians with the title of "Father of the Railway".
It was not until 1825, that the success of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, world's first public railway, proved that
the railways could be made as useful to the general shipping public as to the colliery owner. This railway broke new
ground by using rails made of rolled wrought iron, produced at Bedlington Ironworks in Northumberland. Such rails were
stronger. This railway linked the town of Darlington with the port of Stockton-on-Tees and was intended to enable local
collieries (which were connected to the line by short branches) to transport their coal to the docks. As this would
constitute the bulk of the traffic, the company took the important step of offering to haul the colliery wagons or chaldrons
by locomotive power, something that required a scheduled or timetabled service of trains. However, the line also functioned
as a toll railway, on which private horse-drawn wagons could be carried. This curious hybrid of a system (which also
included, at one stage, a horse-drawn passenger wagon) could not last and within a few years, traffic was restricted to
timetabled trains. (However, the tradition of private owned wagons continued on railways in Britain until the 1960s.)

A replica of the Planet, which ran on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway from 1830
The success of the Stockton and Darlington encouraged the rich investors in the rapidly industrialising North West of
England to embark upon a project to link the rich cotton manufacturing town of Manchester with the thriving port
of Liverpool. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the first modern railway, in that both the goods and passenger
traffic were operated by scheduled or timetabled locomotive hauled trains. When it was built, there was serious doubt that
locomotives could maintain a regular service over the distance involved. A widely reported competition was held in 1829
called the Rainhill Trials, to find the most suitable steam engine to haul the trains. A number of locomotives were entered,
including Novelty, Perseverance and Sans Pareil. The winner was Stephenson's Rocket, which steamed better because of
its multi-tubular boiler (suggested by Henry Booth, a director of the railway company).
The promoters were mainly interested in goods traffic, but after the line opened on 15 September 1830, they were
surprised to find that passenger traffic was just as remunerative. The success of the Liverpool and Manchester railway
influenced the development of railways elsewhere in Britain and abroad. The company hosted many visiting deputations from
other railway projects and many railwaymen received their early training and experience upon this line. The Liverpool and
Manchester line was, however, only 35 miles (56 km) long. The world's first trunk line can be said to be the Grand
Junction Railway, opening in 1837 and linking a midpoint on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway with Birmingham,
via Crewe, Stafford and Wolverhampton.
Further development
The earliest locomotives in revenue service were small four-wheeled ones similar to the Rocket. However, the inclined
cylinders caused the engine to rock, so they first became horizontal and then, in his "Planet" design, were mounted inside
the frames. While this improved stability, the "crank axles" were extremely prone to breakage. Greater speed was
achieved by larger driving wheels at expense of a tendency for wheel slip when starting. Greater tractive effort was
obtained by smaller wheels coupled together, but speed was limited by the fragility of the cast iron connecting rods. Hence,
from the beginning, there was a distinction between the light fast passenger locomotive and the slower more powerful goods
engine. Edward Bury, in particular, refined this design and the so-called "Bury Pattern" was popular for a number of
years, particularly on the London and Birmingham.
Meanwhile, by 1840, Stephenson had produced larger, more stable, engines in the form of the 2-2-2 "Patentee" and six-
coupled goods engines. Locomotives were travelling longer distances and being worked more extensively. The North Midland
Railway expressed their concern to Robert Stephenson who was, at that time, their general manager, about the effect of
heat on their fireboxes. After some experiments, he patented his so-called Long Boiler design. These became a new standard
and similar designs were produced by other manufacturers, particularly Sharp Brothers whose engines became known
affectionately as "Sharpies".
The longer wheelbase for the longer boiler produced problems in cornering. For his six-coupled engines, Stephenson removed
the flanges from the centre pair of wheels. For his express engines, he shifted the trailing wheel to the front in the 4-2-
0 formation, as in his "Great A". There were other problems: the firebox was restricted in size or had to be mounted
behind the wheels; and for improved stability most engineers believed that the centre of gravity should be kept low.
The most extreme outcome of this was the Crampton locomotive which mounted the driving wheels behind the firebox and
could be made very large in diameter. These achieved the hitherto unheard of speed of 70 mph (110 km/h) but were very
prone to wheelslip. With their long wheelbase, they were unsuccessful on Britain's winding tracks, but became popular in
the USA and France, where the popular expression became prendre le Crampton.
John Gray of the London and Brighton Railway disbelieved the necessity for a low centre of gravity and produced a series
of locomotives that were much admired by David Joy who developed the design at the firm of E. B. Wilson and Company to
produce the 2-2-2 Jenny Lind locomotive, one of the most successful passenger locomotives of its day. Meanwhile, the
Stephenson 0-6-0 Long Boiler locomotive with inside cylinders became the archetypal goods engine.

Growth of British railways[60]

Year Total miles

1830 98
 1835 338

1840 1,498

1845 2,441

1850 6,621

1855 8,280

1860 10,433

Expanding network
Railways quickly became essential to the swift movement of goods and labour that was needed for industrialization. In the
beginning, canals were in competition with the railways, but the railways quickly gained ground as steam and rail technology
improved and railways were built in places where canals were not practical.
By the 1850s, many steam-powered railways had reached the fringes of built-up London. But the new companies were not
permitted to demolish enough property to penetrate the City or the West End, so passengers had to disembark
at Paddington, Euston, King's Cross, Fenchurch Street, Charing Cross, Waterloo or Victoria and then make their own way
by hackney carriage or on foot into the centre, thereby massively increasing congestion in the city. A Metropolitan
Railway was built underground to connect several of these separate railway terminals and was the world's first "Metro".
Social and economic consequences
The railways changed British society in numerous and complex ways. Although recent attempts to measure the economic
significance of the railways have suggested that their overall contribution to the growth of GDP was more modest than an
earlier generation of historians sometimes assumed, it is nonetheless clear that the railways had a sizeable impact in many
spheres of economic activity. The building of railways and locomotives, for example, called for large quantities of heavy
materials and thus provided a significant stimulus or ‘backward linkage’, to the coal-mining, iron-production, engineering and
construction industries.
They also helped to reduce transaction costs, which in turn lowered the costs of goods: the distribution and sale of
perishable goods such as meat, milk, fish and vegetables were transformed by the emergence of the railways, giving rise
not only to cheaper produce in the shops but also to far greater variety in people's diets.
Finally, by improving personal mobility the railways were a significant force for social change. Rail transport had originally
been conceived as a way of moving coal and industrial goods but the railway operators quickly realised the potential market
for railway travel, leading to an extremely rapid expansion in passenger services. The number of railway passengers trebled
in just eight years between 1842 and 1850: traffic volumes roughly doubled in the 1850s and then doubled again in the
1860s.[61]
As the historian Derek Aldcroft has noted, ‘in terms of mobility and choice they added a new dimension to everyday life’.
France[edit]

Catholic priests bless a railway engine in Calais, 1848

Main article: History of rail transport in France
In France, railways were first operated by private coal companies the first legal agreement to build a railway was given in
1823 and the line (from Saint-Étienne to Andrézieux) was operated in 1827. Much of the equipment was imported from
Britain but this stimulated machinery makers, which soon created a national heavy industry. Trains became a national medium
for the modernization of backward regions and a leading advocate of this approach was the poet-politician Alphonse de
Lamartine. One writer hoped that railways might improve the lot of "populations two or three centuries behind their
fellows" and eliminate "the savage instincts born of isolation and misery." Consequently, France built a centralized system
that radiated from Paris (plus lines that cut east to west in the south). This design was intended to achieve political and
cultural goals rather than maximize efficiency.
After some consolidation, six companies controlled monopolies of their regions, subject to close control by the government in
terms of fares, finances and even minute technical details. The central government department of Ponts et Chaussées
[bridges and roads] brought in British engineers and workers, handled much of the construction work, provided engineering
expertise and planning, land acquisition and construction of permanent infrastructure such as the track bed, bridges and
tunnels. It also subsidized militarily necessary lines along the German border, which was considered necessary for the
national defense. Private operating companies provided management, hired labor, laid the tracks and built and operated
stations. They purchased and maintained the rolling stock—6,000 locomotives were in operation in 1880, which averaged
51,600 passengers a year or 21,200 tons of freight. .
Development of the network up to 1860
Although starting the whole system at once was politically expedient, it delayed completion and forced even more reliance on
temporary experts brought in from Britain. Financing was also a problem. The solution was a narrow base of funding through
the Rothschilds and the closed circles of the Bourse in Paris, so France did not develop the same kind of national stock
exchange that flourished in London and New York. The system did help modernize the parts of rural France it reached and
help to develop many local industrial centers, mostly in the North (coal and iron mines) and in the East (textiles and heavy
industry). Critics such as Émile Zola complained that it never overcame the corruption of the political system, but rather
contributed to it.
The railways probably helped the industrial revolution in France by facilitating a national market for raw materials, wines,
cheeses and imported and exported manufactured products. In The Rise of Rail-Power in War and Conquest, 1833–1914,
published in 1915, Edwin A. Pratt wrote, "the French railways … attained a remarkable degree of success. … It was
estimated that the 75,966 men and 4,469 horses transported by rail from Paris to the Mediterranean or to the frontiers
of the Kingdom of Sardinia between April 20 and 30 April [during the 1859 Second Italian War of Independence] would
have taken sixty days to make the journey by road. … This… was about twice as fast as the best achievement recorded up
to that time on the German railways. " Yet the goals set by the French for their railway system were moralistic, political
and military rather than economic. As a result, the freight trains were shorter and less heavily loaded than those in such
rapidly industrializing nations such as Britain, Belgium or Germany. Other infrastructure needs in rural France, such as
better roads and canals, were neglected because of the expense of the railways, so it seems likely that there were net
negative effects in areas not served by the trains.