John,
I am not convinced it was used. That is the point I am trying to make. My view on this has shifted somewhat in the course of thinking about this. Evidence from the Diolkos and other presumed rut-ways suggest grooves for guidance. But do we really know that grooves were cut for guidance? Or were the grooves merely worn into the pavement from wheels? There is a big difference, and all we have to go on is the existence of grooves.
Why would you want to guide the wheels of a wagon pulled by a horse? I don’t see how that would have been any improvement until you started hooking multiple wagons together. Where is the evidence that they did that with the stone roadways? Somewhere, early tramways may have been made as stone roads with cut grooves for wheel guidance. But I am not convinced that all the rut evidence existing today was actually used as trams.
I wonder if historians are just taking what they know about the confirmed mine trams, projecting it further back, and seeing in the roadway grooves, trams that never existed.
Bucyrus,
All moving parts wear and eventually wear out. I would think stone rutways would cause a lot of wear on wooden wheels. But it would also seem to me that his was an improvement over the old way or it would not have been used.
John
When considering the Diolkos Wagonway, think about the actual operation of the wheeled bogies running in limestone grooves. All of the leaves, twigs, and other seasonal vegetation trash would settle into the grooves in the limestone roadways. That could have provided considerable friction to a system that intended to reduce friction.
But the guidance function also raises serious questions. Modern railroads use a very supple configuration of wheel flange to minimize friction. But a 6-inch-deep, square groove cut into limestone, guiding a large wooden wheel by engaging its sides with the sides of the deep stone groove would seem to be a formula for immense friction, wear, and heat generation.
I could see the wheels of the Diolkos bogies, bearing dozens of tons, catching fire as they scrubbed the sides of the grooves for rolling guidance while negotiating curves. Maybe they used some sort of fish oil for lubricant or even cooled the wheels with water.
For railroads as we know them today, that is a flanged hard wheel riding on a rail, the mining industry had a lot to do with. Mines required that heavy bulky loads of ore or especially coal be hauled from the mine to a boat to be transported by water. A rail car was the best way to do this. Once out of the mine animals were first used but draft animals are expensive to maintain. Certainly the minimum number would be used and the cars with their undercarriage and wheels would be designed to require the least amount of effort to haul the load.
Steam pumping engines were invented in the late 17th century. They used hugh amounts of coal but that was not much of a problem since they were mainly used at coal mines. Then poor harvests drove up the price of animal fodder and, in the late 18th century mine owners began to look for ways to replace draft animals. Several men designed steam locomotives but they all had a problem: A boiler that would fit on a frame narrow enough to fit on the tracks just could not maintain sufficient steam for steady power under a load. The big breakthrough came when George Stephenson invented the fire tube boiler.
After thinking and reading about this, I conclude that the invention of the railroad goes back possibly as far as 2,600 years with the origin of the Diolkos Wagonway, but the actual origin is lost history. I also conclude that roads preceded railroads. Somewhere along the way, the wheel was invented, but roads must have pre-dated even the wheel depending on how you differentiate early roads from paths.
The next step was the birth of the complete railroad concept unintentionally as wheels wore grooves into the stone paving of roads. When the grooves wore deep enough to begin influencing the wheel tracking, the railroad principle of guidance was born, but not recognized.
Support and low friction inherent with roads plus the guidance of the wheel grooves made the railroad concept complete. But in order to consciously realize the birth of the railroad concept, it required the discovery of a use for it. The use for the support and low friction of roads was universally known, but what was needed to complete the railroad invention was the recognition of the benefit of guidance. But this would not come easy because there was no need for it unless one was to connect several pulled wagons together to make “trains.” And even with several wagons in a train, they could still be self-steering without guiding grooves for the wheels.
Therefore, I conclude that the need for wheel guidance came much later than the origination of wheel grooves worn in the pavement. Furthermore, I am not convinced that the grooves in roads were ever intentionally cut into the pavement for the purpose of wheel guidance; or that the naturally worn grooves were ever used for wheel guidance. While it may be true that naturally worn grooves did catch the wagon wheels and guide them, I doubt that it served any purpose other than to seed the idea of the railroad concept which would be intentionally put to use later in history.
I think these assumptions are borne out by the fact that history seems to hold the conflicting twin conclusions that the ruts in the roads were either worn in naturally and found useful for guidance; or intentionally cut in as a guiding feature. Even the Diolkos Wagonway, a ship portage road said to be the first railroad, is reported to present the conflicting evidence that its grooves were cut in intentionally in some areas, and were produced by wheel wear in other areas.
The Diolkos is a departure from the basic wagon road in that it was a dedicated portage road for the purpose of carrying enormous loads. So, in terms of loading, it comes closer to the purpose of the railroad concept. But still, the load got its weight from its oversize bulk, and not from the linear concept of a trainload. Once you commit the amount of pulling effort needed to transport the ship loads on the Diolkos, would it be that hard to use some of that power to steer the wheeled dolly that bore the ship? Being that the Diolkos was in operation for 650 years, there was plenty of time to make grooves by wheel wear. So I have not seen enough information on the Diolkos to conclude that it was made with intentional grooves for guidance.
I see the following sequential progression leading to the development of the railroad concept:
1) Paths for human and livestock traffic created by the repeated passage of traffic over an intended route.
2) Paths improved with hard surfaces to ease the passage of human and livestock traffic.
3) Roads as further improved paths with hard surfaces for human, livestock traffic, and widened for steered wheeled wagon traffic pulled by livestock.
4) Roads with use continued to the point of wearing ruts into the hard surface.
5) Roads with wheel wear ruts made deep enough to begin inadvertent wheel guidance.
6) The realization that wheel guidance could be useful.
7) Roads (tramways) with wheel wear ruts made deep enough to intentionally use for guidance.
8) Roads (tramways) with wheel guidance grooves intentionally cut into the surface.
9) Railroads (tramways) with two longitudinal “rail” members supported on a separate foundation with a guidance feature consisting of flanged wheels running on the rail, plain wheels with flanged rails, or plain wheels with a guide pin running in a groove.
The true origin of the railroad concept was with item #5. But it was not consciously recognized until item #6. The intentional use of guidance in item #7-9 could not have preceded item #6.
And I see your point, Bucyrus. On a stone surface the natural action of wheels would probably be too scattered to make usable ruts. Rutways for steering would have to be put in either by cutting them in or by laying the stone in such a way as to provide them. And that would be a deliberate action.
John WRBut Bucyrus, Anyone who has ever walked through the snow knows that it is easer if you can follow the footsteps of someone who has gone before. A dirt path will have a compacted area where walking is a little easier than on the grassy sides. And a dirt road will have compacted areas, ruts if you will, where following them is easier than leaving them. How much of a jump is it when following natural ruts to think that maybe artificial ruts would be more precise and work better, particularly when the same wagon passes over the same road repeatedly? And certainly there would be a self conscious effort to create artificial ruts so I think that would be what you call "invention." And I think it would also be evolution. John
Anyone who has ever walked through the snow knows that it is easer if you can follow the footsteps of someone who has gone before. A dirt path will have a compacted area where walking is a little easier than on the grassy sides. And a dirt road will have compacted areas, ruts if you will, where following them is easier than leaving them. How much of a jump is it when following natural ruts to think that maybe artificial ruts would be more precise and work better, particularly when the same wagon passes over the same road repeatedly? And certainly there would be a self conscious effort to create artificial ruts so I think that would be what you call "invention." And I think it would also be evolution.
I understand your point, but I think you are blending a couple principles together. The tracks made in snow become denser than the surrounding undisturbed snow over a couple days or so. Thus they provide better support for the next person who steps in them.
The ruts of a road do get compacted and develop better support over time. They also become cleared of obstructions and mark the way. But the ruts of hard stone surfaced wagonways were intended too provided wheel guidance just like a railroad. There is no analogy between those ruts and the common wheel paths of the “two rut roads” that wind through so many forests today. As you say, those dirt road ruts are easier to follow, but it is only because they of free of obstacles, and not because they provide physical guidance.
The ruts of wagonways were grooves deep enough, and with sides close enough to vertical to prevent wheels from climbing out of them. They were in effect, flanged rails. Each rut was analogous to a rail with two flanges constituted by the two sides of the groove. They would not inherently need double flanges, but that is the natural result of a guiding groove.
And I suppose the double flanges gave the wheels a choice of being guided by either the inner flanges or the outer ones, depending on the exact wheel track dimension and wheel width. This would have provided handy fit tolerance in the building of the wheeled equipment to match wagonways. I would bet that they measured the gage of wagonways to the centers of the ruts and the centers of the wheels, but it is only a guess.
Here is good photo of Diolkos Wagonway:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~klio/im/dailylife/diolkos.jpg
Notice the way the grooves depart from the centerline of the stone bed going into the distant curve. That suggests to me that the Diolkos began as a basic stone roadway without grooves. If that were the case, then negotiating the curve would have required steering the wheeled trolley carrying the ship.
It is anybody’s guess how they would have steered such a wheeled trolley that was carrying a very heavy load. They might have just relied on yanking the vehicle to one side or the other as required to keep it in alignment with the road. No doubt there was a lot of horse and/or human power at work powering the move, so it seems probable that steering was primitive and uncertain.
If that was the case, curves would have been a challenge, so the tracks wandering off-center into the curve indicates the possibility that the wheeled trolley was not guided by intentional grooves. Instead, the trolley simply wanted to go straight, and it fought the intentions of the crew to make it follow the curve. Then, after running that routine many times, the wheels began to wear grooves. So the grooves wandering off center are evidence that they began the operation without grooves, and the grooves were wore in with repeated use over time.
What other explanation can there be?
Certainly, with the apparent precision of that roadway shown in the photograph, they would have cut the grooves centered on the roadway; if they had intentionally cut the grooves.
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In thinking about it and looking at the photo, I can see another possible explanation. The grooves may not be off center. It may be that stones are missing from the left edge of the road as it heads into the curve. Perhaps those are loose, recovered stones standing on the roadway in the distance.
Some estimates place the origin of the Diolkos Wagonway 2,613 years ago. I would certainly call it a railroad. It has tracks intentionally cut as grooves in stone to provide track guidance. It is a solid, load bearing, stone roadway structure with the bottoms of the grooves being a stone surface capable of minimizing rolling friction of wheels.
It was a portage railroad for moving boats and ships. That application seems logical as the origin of the railroad because it is where the earlier era of transport using water need a form of land transport that could match the load capacity and control of boats and ships on water.
They say the gage of the Diolkos was 63”. They don’t say how they measured the gage, nor do they speculate on the unit of measure at the time the gage was selected.
Interestingly, they say that there is evidence in some portions of the archaeologically excavated Diolkos that indicate that the grooves were intentionally cut for guidance, and in other areas, evidence suggests that the grooves were worn. It is very interesting that the point would be blurry with the original railroad just as it is with the Roman and other ancient roadways coming later. Seemingly, the grooves made intentionally for guidance, or worn unintentionally is sort of like the chicken and the egg.
So again, this suggests the possibility that even the progenitor of modern railroads may have begun as a stone roadway, and only became a true railroad once the wheels wore grooves as an unintended consequence.
Here is a pretty good description of the Diolkos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diolkos
I'm surprised that no one seems to be mentioning the fast approaching 500th anniversary of the first actual known railroad (as opposed to ruts that steer but don't support). Reisszug in to Hohensalzburg. (Years even before De Re Metallica...)
Semper Vaporo The purpose? To keep carts on the straight and narrow. As I described in a previous post, the Grecian market was "stocked" at night because carts and animals were not allowed in the area during the day when people (shoppers) were there, They didn't have mercury vapor lamps to illuminate the area for the delivery boys pushing carts around. In the dark the carts would go where they were supposed to and not wander into unknown/unwanted places. Cart full of goods are hard to push AND steer at the same time, so a track provided guidance while the worker provided the motive power. Same for roads and other places were a track would keep the carts going where they were supposed to go.
The purpose? To keep carts on the straight and narrow. As I described in a previous post, the Grecian market was "stocked" at night because carts and animals were not allowed in the area during the day when people (shoppers) were there, They didn't have mercury vapor lamps to illuminate the area for the delivery boys pushing carts around. In the dark the carts would go where they were supposed to and not wander into unknown/unwanted places.
Cart full of goods are hard to push AND steer at the same time, so a track provided guidance while the worker provided the motive power. Same for roads and other places were a track would keep the carts going where they were supposed to go.
My main point is that whiles we trace railroad gage back to the ruts, I would not only trace gage back to the ruts, but I would trace railroads back to the ruts as well. However, this would have railroads originating in practice before anyone knew of what to use them for. Oddly, this would mean that the concept for our modern railroads was born unconsciously a long time before anybody knew what to do with it. I would say that the ruts became true railroads once they developed sufficiently to capture the random tracking of wagons, and began guiding the wheels. Although, this must have been seen as an irritating road defect rather than the birth of a useful invention.
I think the premise that the ruts comprised the first railroads is actually stronger than the premise that standard gage originated with the ruts. As you say, the ruts were not exact in form, and therefore unlikely to indicate a gage precise enough for railroad practice. But perhaps, we have actual wagon wheel track dimension is available in the historical record. That part seems unclear in the great gage origination legend.
However, your information that some of what might be regarded as wheel ruts were actually intentional grooves intended to act as tramways is new information to me. I would like to know about the recorded history of that. If that is true, it would seem to mean that the Roman chariots and wagons wearing ruts were inconsequential to either the origin of railroads, or the origin of gage.
I looked up the Diolkos Wagonway mentioned in a post above by narig01. That is said to be the first application of the railroad principle, and it originated in 600 B.C. So that would mean that the wagon ruts in the roads were inconsequential to the origin of the railroad concept, since they date much later than the Dilokos Wagonway. Interestingly the Diolkos Wagonway was a railroad with plain wheels running in grooves. So it had the flanges on the rails, in effect.
So I have to modify my theory of railroads originating unintentionally with worn ruts. Clearly the concept was used intentionally in 600 B.C. Interestingly the Diolkos Wagonway was in operation 3 ½ times longer than the entire history of railroading in the United States.
A brief description of the Diolkos Wagonway is here:
http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=121653
I'm surprised that no one seems to be mentioning the fast approaching 500th anniversary of the "official documentation" of the first actual known railroad (as opposed to ruts that steer but don't support). Reisszug in Obersalzburg. (Years even before De Re Metallica...)
BucyrusMore accurately the principle was created because technically you need a purpose for an idea in order for it to be an invention. An invention needs claims, and claims must address a purpose. But when the railroad concept was created with the ruts, it was by accident, and so by definition, it had no purpose. Indeed, they were probably trying to invent something to fill in the ruts.
But Bucyrus,
Go back and read my post from a few days ago. The story is almost as old as Railroads are. I think it is all based on incomplete and erroneous information from way back then. What perpetuates it is that it provides a humorous explanation for why the incredulous number of 4 ft, 8 point 5 inches, and why it is not FIVE FEET EVEN or some other "rational" value.
Sure wish I had saved that discussion from that other railroad forum where people actually went and measured the Roman road ruts and then went further to measure the Grecian market ruins. That discussion (for "ME") settled a lot of the "wonderment" about it all. (Of course, it just could be that some of the postings in that discussion were just as wrong as the Roman horse tie to the reason for Standard Gauge! )
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Semper VaporoThe purpose? To keep carts on the straight and narrow. Cart full of goods are hard to push AND steer at the same time, so a track provided guidance while the worker provided the motive power.
Cart full of goods are hard to push AND steer at the same time, so a track provided guidance while the worker provided the motive power.
I have never heard of that before. That would indeed be intentional tramways built into the roads. But then why does the classic tale about the origin of standard gage not go back to these actual original tramways? The story seems to always go back to the original mine trams with iron rails, and then jumps back to the Roman chariots weaing grooves into the roads. The grooves, though unintentional, forced a standardization of wagon wheel track spacing, which became a convention for tram gage due to the manufacturing art for wagons being applied to tram cars.
Semper VaporoI have to say that I don't believe the "ruts' we are discussing were "worn into" the ground by the passage of wheels. The "Grooves" that are present in some of the ancient roadways of the Romans and previous civilizations were produced deliberately, either by cutting square channels in solid stone or by placing squared rock faces in a line with a gap to opposing squared rock faces to produce the "groove".
The "Grooves" that are present in some of the ancient roadways of the Romans and previous civilizations were produced deliberately, either by cutting square channels in solid stone or by placing squared rock faces in a line with a gap to opposing squared rock faces to produce the "groove".
What was the purpose of the deliberately produced grooves in the roads that you describe?
I have to say that I don't believe the "ruts' we are discussing were "worn into" the ground by the passage of wheels. Wheels wobble and "back in the day" there just was not the technology to make them all the exact same "gauge" and rigid enough to produce the exact same track as the carts moved (either pulled by draft animals or pushed by human hands). Any "worn ruts" would actually be wide depressions with a curved cross-section (bell curve) bottom.
No serendipity, but true "invention" in the strictest sense of the word.
John WRBut I imagine a lot of things that we consider "invented" actually began when someone noticed a natural phenomena like wheels being guided by ruts and realized this could be put to good use. John
Yes, when I say the railroad principle was invented by accident once ruts were worn into the road, I must qualify the term, “invented.”
More accurately the principle was created because technically you need a purpose for an idea in order for it to be an invention. An invention needs claims, and claims must address a purpose. But when the railroad concept was created with the ruts, it was by accident, and so by definition, it had no purpose. Indeed, they were probably trying to invent something to fill in the ruts.
Kind of like those grooved wooden toy train tracks (such as for "Thomas the Tank Engine", and others) ?
See: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/wooden-train-tracks-17031674.jpg
Yes, I've heard about the "rutways" that guided wagon wheels. And I agree, the idea of a guided wheel is the important thing. The technology of guidance may have changed but the wheel is still guided.
But I imagine a lot of things that we consider "invented" actually began when someone noticed a natural phenomena like wheels being guided by ruts and realized this could be put to good use.
But it does seem to me that before about the 16th century or so people just weren't very curious. Then they became curious and, for example, Galileo noticed that the chandeliers in his church, when they swung, even as the length of the swing decreased the time of the swing remained constant and his observation led to inventing the clock.
I agree with all you said, but you are only going back to the point where the railroad was invented with the purpose of self-guidance and low friction. My point is that long before that, the railroad principle was invented with the ruts worn in the roads totally by accident, with no intended purpose. No purpose was even recognized for the railroads accidentally created by the ruts. The idea for the purpose came later, starting at the beginning of your explanation.
So not only does the gage go back to the ruts, but the railroad concept originated there as well, although with no recognized purpose. It originated with flanged rails and plain wheels but I would say that still qualifies as the railroad principle.
BucyrusThis leads to the amazing conclusion that the first railroads were built entirely by accident as an unintended consequence
I have read (but I cannot recall where) that in Germany on a church's stained glass window is an image of a car with flanged wheels on a track in a mine and the car is being pulled by two children. The window was made in, I think, 1380. This is the earliest known image of a flanged wheel on a track.
Certainly, men must have realized early on that a wheel on a smooth surface is a lot easier to turn than a wheel rolling on the ground. And they must have also realized that you don't need a surface as wide as a road; all you need is to keep that surface under the wheels. And it is a lot easier to put the flange on the wheels than it is to put it the whole length of the rail. So it seems to me that the flanged wheel on the rail evolved rather than being invented. At first there were wooden wheels on wooden rails and then I suppose iron straps were added to the wheels and the rails and, as time went on, more iron and less wood was used. When the Bessemer process was invented the iron turned to steel.
Also, most likely the flanged wheel and rail were reserved for special situations where fairly heavy loads had to me moved for a specific purpose. For example, hauling ore out of a mine to a smelter. As late as the early 19th century railroads were generally used to link places like mines with waterways so coal could be moved to places where it was needed. As I understand it, up to about 1860 in the US the main method of transportation was by water and railroads were used to carry various products to the closest water way.
Armstrong's The Railroad, What it is, What it does has a page on how the railroad evolved, from the Roman hard surfaced roads, to cart tracks in medieval mines, to tramways (plateways) and finally railways. The tramways had "the flange" on the track, where the railways had the flange on the wheel, though there was some initial disagreement about whether the flange belonged on the inside or outside of the rail (there's a good reason for it being on the inside). Also discussed is whether the wheels should turn on the axles or should be fixed to the axle. Finally, there's a short discussion on whether one rail is better than two.
Armstrong's ultimate point is that steel wheels on steel rails provide for a very low rolling resistance along with a guideway that makes train operation possible.
- Erik
The Origin of Railroads
What seems to link the origin of railroad gage to Roman chariots and early wagons is the ruts they left. But there is another way to look at this. The wheels of early transport were slowly machining grooves into the pavement; and those grooves in solid stone could be regarded as actual railroads, although de facto perhaps. It would depend on your definition of rail.
But the hard running surface, specific way alignment, and linear continuity of the wheel ruts perfectly correspond to the identical features of railroad rails. The only difference is that the wheel ruts and their wheels were like a railroad with the flange on the rail rather than on the wheel.
I don’t know what these early road builders thought about the ruts wearing into their pavement, but they couldn’t have been happy about it. It would have been damage on par with our modern day potholes. Therefore, while the early ruts were railroads, they were so without a purpose. The self-guidance was not only useless, but probably caused wheel damage and conflict as route changes were made with the guidance coming from the horse obeying the driver.
This leads to the amazing conclusion that the first railroads were built entirely by accident as an unintended consequence; they were railroads built by accident without even realizing the fundamental point or benefit of the railroad principle. That realization would come later.
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