Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
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.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag