Congratulations, you've just invented the wheel!
For best results, roll it on something flat which can bear a lot of weight.
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Using very large wheels - like those seen on Red River carts - was one way to use wheel technology in the Canadian wilderness.
Historically, bodies of water were the favoured 'flat medium' for travel in Canada. Canoes made reliable progress until a portage was reached. A lake which had frozen with few pressure ridges of buckled-up ice provided a good low friction surface for sleighs in winter.
However, the freezing and thawing seasons interfered with the dependability of water.
Early roads were often maintained by compulsory free civic labour, performed by an individual resident, on a particular short section of the road. This maintenance was often indifferently performed with inconsistent enforcement of standards by authorities. Early main roads in eastern Canada were often muddy or flooded - deeply-rutted traps for vehicles. Paying passengers were often enjoined to exit a vehicle to help free it from the mud or to push it up a hill ... if they wanted to continue on their journey.
As an element of military defence and preparedness, or to encourage settlement and commerce, some order was brought to road travel. Roads were surfaced with locally-sourced tree trunks to form a corduroy road.
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| from: The Story of Canadian Roads; Edwin C Guillet; 1966, University of Toronto Press. |
Above: A sketch from 1844 of corduroy road near Orillia.
The irregular surface of the road was often levelled with earth. However, corduroy bridges were noted for their ability to cause serious injury to horses trying to cross their log decks.
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With water and steam powered sawmills in operation, a new technology was briefly used to smooth roads.
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| from: The Story of Canadian Roads; Edwin C Guillet; 1966, University of Toronto Press. |
The first plank roads were installed east of Toronto on the Kingston Road in 1835-36. Overall, about 192 miles of plank roads were built by the government. Private enterprises built about 250 miles of their own. This method of road surfacing was only used for about 20 years. Wooden planks had become too valuable.
The image above is an undated photo taken at an unknown location. Usually only half (8 feet) of the road's width was planked, with the rest being planked if the traffic warranted it.
Between 1837 and 1839, about 20 miles of macadamized road (large stones overlaid with progressively smaller stones, then topped with stone dust and water to create a cement-like layer) were built between Napanee and Kingston at the cost of $132,000 (I have no idea how to correct that figure for inflation!).
Macadamized roads demanded greater care in their construction.
In Canada ... What we really need is an all-weather system with a smooth surface which can bear a great amount of weight!
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Meanwhile ...
In Britain, the nursery of plateways, railways and steam locomotion ...
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| from: British Railways; Arthur Elton; 1945; Collins. |
Bath Stone (a type of limestone) is being transported here. It's attraction for building is that a given block of stone can be shaped along any axis - this rock has no significant layers. From the quarry it is being taken to erect many of the city buildings in Bath. It was also reaching the Avon River for waterborne transportation to major cities.
The technology used in this operation was particularly ingenious. It is well-suited to transporting heavy loads a short distance - dependably and safely.
With a gauge of 3 feet 11 inches, the wagonway used axles, bearings and flanged wheels made of iron, running on wooden rails. The rails were spaced using wooden ties on a ballasted roadbed. The downhill route was operated by gravity, with horses returning the empties. Iron brakes pressed down on the wheel treads to regulate speed. A ratcheting brake system allowed for finer adjustments on individual wheels. The wagons could transport loads weighing 5-6 tons.
Below, in this image of Bath from Google Maps, today's Ralph Allen Drive is the road in the lower right corner.
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However, Bath Stone was a specialty item, compared to an essential commodity ...
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| from: British Railways; Arthur Elton; 1945; Collins. |
The bulk commodity of increasing industrial significance was coal. The 'number key' for the illustration is not provided. The guidance system seems to be wooden rails laid inside the standardized gauge of the wheels.
You will notice that the brake handle and brake shoe (items G and H) use a second-class lever to apply pressure to the wheel tread.
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| from: Early Railways; JB Snell; 1964; Weidenfeld & Nicolson. |
This view is from Gateshead in 1783 looking across to Newcastle-on-Tyne. The load of coal is descending the Parkmoor Wagonway. The driver is literally riding the brake. Coal can be found in rock formations at all altitudes ... in strata which may exist in horizontal planes ... or in an infinite variety of curved and folded shapes.
This is a nice image as it suggests the horse is only taxed during the empty backhaul to the mine. However, we can assume that being a horse in this kind of operation was pretty demanding work.
For modellers ... the wagons had wooden wheels, which ran over wooden rails and ties, with ballast beneath. Plates of wrought iron were attached to the rails on sharp curves and other areas of high friction.
Looking down to tidewater, we can imagine we see coal barges, working to 'lighter' coal to waiting ships ... or preparing to barge in to nearby towns and industrial sites with the coal, where it will be consumed.
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Periodically, I check on this date and each time it's more sobering.
In 2026, the year 2008 was the point in human history when we had burned HALF of all the coal ever burned.
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| from: Encyclopedia of Railways; OS Nock; 1977; Octopus Books. |
The wagonway (tramway, plateway) above was built at the head of the Derby Canal and it was in operation until 1908. Here, you get a clear view of the stones which supported the rail joints and kept the track within gauge tolerances.
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| from: Early Trains; Bryan Morgan; 1974; Golden Press. |
From another book this is probably the same operation but a different view. It is described as the Derby colliery and canal tramroad, built in 1794. The tramway uses plate rails and the wheels are unflanged.
In these views, you can see one of the drawbacks of using plateways or tramway rails ... when compared to T-shaped or I-shaped rails resting on ties, with the roadbed below ... Here, small pieces of stone and other objects are always finding their way onto the travelling surface.
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| from: Early Trains; Bryan Morgan; 1974; Golden Press. |
This museum exhibit came from the area of Blist's Hill, which is north-west of Birmingham. At Blist's Hill, they mined coal, iron and fire clay ... supporting the operation of local blast furnaces, and brick and tile works.
Here you can see another variation of a plateway to support and guide heavy loads.
I think that bolt inserted into the switch 'frog' may have been a 'switch keeper' (working like a switch lock).
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| from: Early Railways; JB Snell; 1964; Weidenfeld & Nicolson. |
Sometimes, people take great pride in designing systems which are too elaborate for the task which needs to be done!
In fact, I think my eyes were confused by a complex system of stub switches. Each switch has its own switch stand. Given the amount of energy it would take ... to move this kind of weight over a period of decades ... the system they developed must be pretty efficient.
This was a double-flange system used at the Oakeley quarries at Blaenau Festiniog, Wales. Those may be blocks of slate which you see in the cars - which will be processed to produce slate shingles.
Historically, a Slater (craftsman) would use experience and a variety of tools to separate the layers and size them into standard dimensions. This process included using a slate punch to prepare nail holes.
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Applying Steam Power
In Britain, they developed 'inclined planes' or 'cable inclines' to extract vast quantities of coal from mines located in hilly regions ... if the mines were beyond the reach of the canal system. The cable incline at Brusselton on the Stockton & Darlington railway is shown below.
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| from: Early Trains; Bryan Morgan; 1974; Golden Press. |
Initially, horses were used to move loads in areas of low gradients - the smooth metal rails made each horse more productive. Steam-powered winding engines would be installed at the top of inclined stretches of track to move loads up and down large hills with cables.
You could build a very heavy and powerful steam engine on solid ground and not worry about it spreading the rails of an early, frail track system.
And given their limited power and low tractive effort, it was better to limit the early steam locomotives to fairly level stretches of track.
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One of several applications of inclined planes to move coal in the United States was the Delaware & Hudson gravity railroad, which operated between 1829 and 1899.
On the D&H gravity, in some places, they used a fun and fascinating combination of steep ascending lines, and more gently-descending return lines on which they ran ... engineless hand-braked trains of empties. These lines also provided passenger service - that's the fun part.
This duplication of some trackage was actually efficient as it optimized traffic flow on the limited capacity lines - the inclined planes.
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| from: Delaware & Hudson; Jim Shaughnessy; 1982; Howell North. |
The image above is undated. This is the Racket Brook Coal Breaker and Plane 4. The image suggests they had wires for telegraphs and/or to deliver electricity - so probably after 1880 is my guess.
You can see the switcher crew is on duty. Notice that the stub switch has no switch stand, but it may use a 'keeper' of some sort, so that a lined switch stays lined.
I think the winding engine is beyond that shed at the top of the hill. On the left track, a low-slung, narrow gauge weighted 'barney car' has been pulled out of its 'barney pit' [insert your dinosaur/coal joke here] to 'push' that car up the hill.
Among the advantages of a barney system was the fact that it was not necessary to couple the winding cable to each car. Those look like spring derails. They allow the standard gauge car to ascend ... but if a cable breaks ... the descent will end in a relatively harmless derailment.
Generally, the industrial activity here was to take anthracite coal from mine to canal. As you know, anthracite is a hard almost smokeless coal which was in great demand in the nearby cities of the US northeast ... to produce space heat in buildings, or the steam (i.e. for stationary steam engines) used to power municipal waterworks or early urban applications of electrical generation.
The D&H was a favourite railroad of LC Gagnon and I have outlined aspects of its operations, including the fascinating gravity operations, elsewhere on this blog. (There's a search box in the top banner.)
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To illustrate the point about early motive power and early track structures, here is the Stourbridge Lion.
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| from: Early American Locomotives; John H White Jr; 1972; Dover Publications. |
This engine was imported from England by the Delaware & Hudson in 1829. On a test run of 3 miles, it did extensive damage to the light track. It, and another imported engine, were ultimately repurposed to power machinery.
One account stated that the combination of the engine's weight and the rigidity of the track system led to this track damage. In the North American operating environment - with its temperature extremes, minimal ballasting, and 'less formal' maintenance regimens - not having a hyper-engineered track structure ultimately proved to be a good adaptation.
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Returning to Britain ...
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| from: The Science of Railways, Vol III; Marshall M Kirkman; 1900; World Railway Publishing Co. |
Actually, all the identified pieces are not shown in the book from which the illustration comes.
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| from: The Science of Railways, Vol III; Marshall M Kirkman; 1900; World Railway Publishing Co. |
You can see that a wide variety of design ideas were tried.
I have chosen a few representative designs which have some some historical significance.
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| from: The Science of Railways, Vol III; Marshall M Kirkman; 1900; World Railway Publishing Co. |
However, these are all rigid track structures which call for a large number of imported pieces. This will add to the cost and complexity of building a railway in North America ... especially a long one.
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Brunel's Baulk Railway
The baulks are the longitudinal wooden supports on which the rails are laid.
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screencap from: Brunel's Broad Gauge Railway; Christopher Awdry; 1992; Awdry & Haynes.
https://archive.org/details/brunelsbroadgaug0000awdr/mode/1up |
I was made aware of this track structure from a simplified painted illustration in one of my books.
I was happy to find a scale drawing showing the actual dimensions and specifications. With a gauge of 7 feet, you will recognize this as the standard track design for Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway. This railway had an extensive network in southern Britain and its broad gauge operations were conducted from 1838 until 1892.
If you look closely, you may be able to see that Brunel's rails are in the shape of an inverted 'U' with a very broad base.
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Ultimately, railways provided a level, firm surface on which to roll wheels. As a function of their design development, long trains of 'wagons' became self-steering.
Their track structures evolved to distribute the weight of increasingly heavy consists, without being deformed by them. As tracks, wheels and their metallurgy evolved they became almost frictionless.
