Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Railways

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Over the last 200 years, railroads have been one of the most important methods of transportation. Railroads helped make the modern world. They are capable of transporting people and goods quickly over long distances at a low cost.  However, most people would be shocked to learn that railways predate the development of locomotives. In fact, the earliest evidence of using some sort of premade track dates back thousands of years before the first locomotive.  …and despite the development of new and faster forms of transportation, rails look to continue to have a bright future.  Learn more about railways, their history, and their future on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Available nationally, look for a bottle of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond at your local store. Find out more at heavenhilldistillery.com/hh-bottled-in-bond.php Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. Use the code EverythingEverywhere for a 20% discount on a subscription at Newspapers.com. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Benji Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the last 200 years, railroads have become one of the most important methods of transportation. Railroads help make the modern world. They're capable of transporting people and goods quickly, over long distances, at a low cost. However, most people would be shocked to learn that railways predate the development of locomotives. In fact, the earliest evidence of using some pre-made track dates back thousands of years before the first locomotive. And despite the development of new and faster forms of transportation, rails look to continue to have a bright future. Learn more about railways, their history, and their future on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts

of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us. Every week on the through line podcast from NPR. When most people think of railways, it usually begins and ends with locomotives, and that's perfectly understandable. This is the overwhelmingly most popular form of rail system today. However, if you think about it just a little, there are other certain types of rail transportation. Trollies and monorails come to mind, which are similar to, but different from trains. This episode is not going to be about locomotives. While it isn't going to

to be about train engines, they certainly do have a major role to play in rail transportation. Locomotives came about with the advent of the steam engine on which I've done a previous episode. This episode is going to be about the rails, or more generically, the track. Unbeknownst to most people, tracks and rails predated locomotives by centuries, although they were in limited use until the development of the steam engine. The earliest predecessors to rails are more generically called track. A track is distinct from a road or a trail in that it is specifically built for a particular type of transportation over a particular distance. If that seems a bit vague, it is, but the idea is that it is something that is built, not just something on the ground, which is created via constant use.

The earliest track discovered is called the Post Track. It was found in the Somerset levels in England and dates back to the year 3,838 BC. almost 6,000 years ago. It was a series of wooden planks built through a wetlands area that allowed people to walk easily through a marsh. If this sounds like a far cry from a railroad, you're not wrong, but it checks many of the boxes of a rail system. It was a purposely built track to ease transportation,

in this case, walking. Something more akin to a railway that would be more familiar appeared in the 6th century BC in the form of the deal coast. The Deal Coast was an overland shortcut for ships to get over the Ismuth of Corinth. The Ismuth of Corinth is a 6.3 kilometer or 3.9 mile wide strip of land that connects the Peloponnese Peninsula to the rest of Greece. In ancient times, a canal was proposed but never built. Instead, ships were taken overland to avoid the long and dangerous sea journey around the peninsula. The Deal Coast was a rudimentary tract used to take boats over the Isthmth.

Instead of rails, grooves were used on the road to achieve the same effect. The introduction of rails was an innovation that appeared in the early 16th century. The first mention of rails was in reference to the Ryszig, which is a funicular that went up to the Hohen-Salzburg Castle in Salzburg, Austria. The rails were made of wood, and a cart was attached by a rope pulled by horses to bring goods up to the castle. And for those who haven't heard the term before, a finicular is a railway that goes up and inclined surface such as a hillside. And fun fact, the rice zug is still in operation today, albeit not with wooden rails. This is a good opportunity to explain what is so special about

rails and what purpose they serve. Instead of rails, why not just make a road instead? Wouldn't it be easier to just flatten the ground than it would be to create rails? There are several advantages to running a vehicle over rails instead of on the ground, the biggest of which is reduced friction. A smooth wheel on a smooth rail has less friction than a wheel running over the ground. Less friction makes it easier to pull a cart or allows you to pull a heavier load with the same amount of energy. Second, a rail provides a set path for the vehicle. You know exactly where the vehicle will go because it's on the rail. Finally, replacing a single segment of a rail can be much easier than having to repave or resurface an entire road. These early rail

ways were known as wagonways, as there were wagons that horses usually pulled on the rails. Wagonways were extremely popular in mines. Draft animals pulled carts filled with extremely heavy ore out of the mine. They began appearing in the late 16th century and spread rapidly throughout Europe. Some wagonways used in coal mines in England were able to increase the amount pulled per horse per trip over fourfold. Pulling 10 to 13 tons of coal per run, dramatically increasing the efficiency of the entire mining operation. However, these wooden wheels running on wooden rails were far from optimal. The next big development came with the development of metal rails.

The first use of metal rails was in 1760 by the Cole Brookdale Ironworks, which attached iron plates to the top of their wooden rails. It improved the strength and reduced the friction of the simple wooden rails that they were using. By 1767, fully cast iron rails were being produced that were much more sturdy than wood. In 1787, John Kerr, the manager of a coal mine in Sheffield, England, developed an iron rail with a flange, a small ridge on the outside of the rail that gave it an L-shape. This was designed to keep the wheel on the track and prevent the wagon from derailing. And this was known as a plate rail or a plateway.

In 1789, William Jessup came up with. with another innovation. Instead of a plate rail with a flange to keep the wheel in position, he created what was called an edge rail. The edge rail was just a flat rail without a flange, but in this system, the flange was actually on the wheel. L-shaped plate rails with a flange, and edge rails with no flange actually existed side-by-side into the 19th century. But eventually, the edge rail and the flanged wheel proved themselves to be superior, and it is similar to the type of rails which exist today.

In 1803, Jessup opened the Surrey Iron Railway in South London, which carried passengers. Despite having originated the edge rail, the Surrey Iron Railway used a plate rail system, and when there were complaints about the flange sticking up, they simply raised the road until it was the level of the flange. This is basically the same thing that's done today at rail crossings. While rails were improving, cast iron was not an ideal material for making rails. It was brittle, could only be made in very short lengths, and easily rusted and had to be frequently replaced. In 1820, John Birkenshaw of the Bedlington Ironworks created the first wrought iron rails,

which were far superior, but still not optimal. With the creation of the Bessemer process for making steel, it wasn't until the late 1860s that stronger, more durable steel rails finally became available. The big change, obviously, to rails and railways was the introduction. of the steam-driven locomotive engine. The first steam engines were introduced in the early 19th century, and they quickly spread. This changed everything about rail. Prior to the steam engine, the speed and distance that something could travel over a rail was

actually quite short. Rail was used in mines and factories to move heavy loads, but that was about it. Each system was independent of every other rail system. But with locomotives, people and goods could now travel faster and further. entire cities could be linked together, and that meant different railways could be hooked together. The problem was that every railroad had a different type of track, and it wasn't just a difference between a plate and edge rail. There was also the issue of a track's gauge. The gauge is nothing more than the distance between the two tracks, and everyone had their own

track gauge, which meant that trains from one railway couldn't run on another. In 1825, British engineer George Stevenson proposed a standard for railways. The gauge of his track would be four feet, eight and a half inches, or 1,435 millimeters. However, it wasn't universally adopted. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, arguably the greatest engineer of the 19th century, and on whom I've done a previous episode, built the Great Western Railway using what he called Broad Gage, which was seven feet, one-quarter inches or 2,140 millimeters. This lack of a standard was a huge problem. Britain needed to have some sort of standard for all of its tracks just for the sake of interoperability and consistency.

In 1845, the Royal Commission on Railway gauges convened to set a standard for British railways. After initially leaning towards Brunel's broad gauge, they eventually settled on Stevenson's narrow gauge. Today, Stevenson's 1,435 millimeter standard gauge is used by 70% of all the railways in the world today. There are different gauges of track around the world, but most countries only have one or maybe two gauges. The other gauges are categorized as either broad or narrow, depending on their width relative to the standard gauge. As railroads began to expand, new problems developed. One of the biggest problems was how to handle multiple trains on a limit. number of tracks, and this resulted in the development of railway switches. A switch is just a

movable section of track that can divert a train from one track to another. The first switches were used on early wooden rails and mines. However, the first iron rail switch was developed in 1797 by John Kerr, the same man who developed the plate rail. His system was in widespread use by 1808. Spring-loaded switches were patented by British engineer Charles Fox in 1838, which allowed for a smoother transition when moving tracks. Eventually, switches were electrified in the late 19th century, allowing for automated and remote switching. The average train track didn't change much for most of the early 20th century. However, as high-speed rail became popular, the tracks on which the trains ran required changes. One of the changes was continuously welded rails.

If you've ever written in a train or seen a movie with passengers on an old train, you may have heard the clickety-clack sound of the train on the rails. The sound was due to the short spaces between the individual rails on the track. Continuously welded rails removed that sound and made for a much smoother ride. Wooden ties which supported the rails were replaced by concrete ties. These provided more support, reduced the sound, and kept the rails aligned better than wood, which is important for, continuously welded rails. Perhaps the biggest change was the creation of banked curves.

In a traditional railroad, curves were flat, which was fine given the speeds at which most trains traveled. However, these flat curves became dangerous, the faster a train travels. At extremely high speeds, the force of a train going around a curve could cause it to derail. By banking the curves, just like at a motor speedway, it helps keep the train on track when traveling at high speeds. And high-speed rail tracks are not even the state-of-the-art in rail technology. Magnetic levitation railways propose to put electromagnets in rails to levitate above the track, resulting in zero friction. With zero friction, you could theoretically achieve speeds much higher than even the fastest trains today. However, I'm going to leave magnetic levitation for a future

episode. Most people assume that rail transportation began with the locomotive, but in reality, it's much older. While the technology goes back centuries, it was the locomotives that made rails and rail travel ubiquitous. Rail travel is still popular around the world today, and given some of the technology on the horizon, it will probably be around for centuries to come. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Craig Code 1010 on Apple Podcasts in the United States. He writes,

Mostly Good Episodes, Ruined. A good podcast ruined by too many commercials at the beginning and the Stroke My Ego section at the end, reading of your oh-so great reviews. Well, thanks, Craig. And clearly not all the reviews I read, stroke my ego. Remember that if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show. So,