multiplied, but important works had been constructed to carry
them along upon the same level. "The coal-waggon roads from the pits to
the water," he says, "are great works, carried over all sorts of
inequalities of ground, so far as the distance of nine or ten miles. The
tracks of the wheels are marked with pieces of wood let into the road for
the wheels of the waggons to run on, by which one horse is enabled to
draw, and that with ease, fifty or sixty bushels of coals." {5}

Similar waggon-roads were laid down in the coal districts of Wales,
Cumberland, and Scotland. At the time of the Scotch rebellion in 1745, a
tramroad existed between the Tranent coal-pits and the small harbour of
Cockenzie in East Lothian; and a portion of the line was selected by
General Cope as a position for his cannon at the battle of Prestonpans.

In these rude wooden tracks we find the germ of the modern railroad.
Improvements were gradually made in them. Thus, at some collieries, thin
plates of iron were nailed upon their upper surface, for the purpose of
protecting the parts most exposed to friction. Cast-iron rails were also
tried, the wooden rails having been found liable to rot. The first rails
of this kind are supposed to have been used at Whitehaven as early as
1738. This cast-iron road was denominated a "plate-way," from the
plate-like form in which the rails were cast. In 1767, as appears from
the books of the Coalbrookdale Iron Works, in Shropshire, five or six
tons of rails were cast, as an experiment, on the suggestion of Mr.
Reynolds, one of the partners; and they were shortly after laid down to
form a road.

In 1776, a cast-iron tramway, nailed to wooden sleepers, was laid down at
the Duke of Norfolk's colliery near Sheffield. The person who designed
and constructed this coal line was Mr. John Curr, whose son has
erroneously claimed for him the invention of the cast-iron railway. He
certainly adopted it early, and thereby met the fate of men before their
age; for his plan was opposed by the labouring people of the colliery,
who got up a riot in which they tore up the road and burnt the
coal-staith, whilst Mr. Curr fled into a neighbouring wood for
concealment, and lay there _perdu_ for three days and nights, to escape
the fury of the populace. The plates of these early tramways had a ledge
cast on their edge to guide the wheel along the road, after the manner
shown in the annexed cut.

[Pi