rogerfarnworth

When and why were railways created? What were the circumstances which brought about their existence? History does not make it easy to take out one example from a steady continuum of change. ...There have been tracks or platforms since Roman times. You might say that these could be brought within the term railway and therefore the Romans invented the railway. Except there were railways of a sort, at least as far back at 600 BCE, possibly going back even further, maybe as far back as 1000 BCE. The clearest example being the Diolkos Trackway, a paved trackway near Corinth in Ancient Greece which enabled boats to be moved overland across the Isthmus of Corinth. For many people, however, the railways began with the Stockton and Darlington (S&D), though I'm sure people appreciate that history is not always as simple as it may seem. The linked article is based on a short three page article by David Wilson which he wrote in the early 1990s, entitled, 'Mother of Inventions'. It explores some of the significance of the development of the railways and why they seem to hold a special place in our national consciousness. http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/03/03/the-mother-of-all-inventions There will always, and inevitably, be more to say about the development of railways than can be covered in a short article. Some discussion of how those developments occurred would be worthwhile in the context of the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway later in 2025. I have been asked to prepare a talk about Stockton & Darlington railway for a special interest group in East Shropshire and considering its importance will preoccupy me in coming months. I hope this first article will be of interest to some readers.

[b]The Llanfyllin Branch and Oswestry to Llanymynech – Part 1 …[/b] The Llanfyllin Branch was featured in an article by Stanley Jenkins in the October 2003 issue of Steam Days magazine. [3] The immediately adjacent Tanat Valley Light Railway is covered articles elsewhere. They can be found on the links included in the linked article. The two lines ran into the hills to the Southwest of Oswestry. The local Cambrian network is shown diagrammatically in the linked article. .... http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/02/21/the-llanfyllin-branch-and-oswestry-to-llanymynech-part-1/

[b]Henry Robinson Palmer and Early British Monorails[/b] Henry Robinson Palmer (1793-1844) was a British engineer who designed the first monorail system and also invented corrugated iron! Born in 1793 in Hackney, he was the son of the Revd Samuel Palmer, a nonconformist minister, and his wife, Elizabeth, née Walker. [1] He was baptized in Tooting [2] and was educated at the academy run by his father and between 1811 and 1816 was an apprentice at 1811-16 Apprenticed to Bryan Donkin and Co. When he finished his apprenticeship, Palmer was taken on by Thomas Telford, working for him for 10 years and involved with a variety of road/canal surveys and associated designs. In 1818, Palmer was one of three young engineers key to the founding of the Institution of Civil Engineers and on 23rd May 1820, he formally became a member of the Institution. [3] http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/02/19/hugh-robinson-palmer-and-early-british-monorails

I came across this when looking into early railways. ... Ivan Kirillovich Elmanov (Russian: Иван Кириллович Эльманов) was a Russian inventor. During 1820, in Myachkovo, near Moscow, he built a type of monorail described as a road on pillars. [3] The single rail was made of timber baulks resting above the pillars. The wheels were set on this wooden rail, while the horse-drawn carriage had a sled on its top. [3] This construction is considered to be the first known monorail in the world. [5][6] The horse-drawn carriages travelled on an elevated track. One project envisaged using them to transport salt on Crimea. [9] Russia was a pioneer in the design and construction of monorails, from early horse-drawn models to later electrical and magnetic levitation systems. [2] Sadly, Elmanov could not find investors to fund for his project and stopped working on the monorail. In 1821, Henry Palmer patented his own (similar) monorail design in the UK. [2][3] http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/02/19/early-monorail-proposals-in-russia/

[b]Stockport Corporation Tramways – Part 2 (Modern Tramway Vol. 12 No. 138, June 1949)[/b] This is a second article looking at Stockport Corporations Tramways. Mersey Square was the main hub of Stockport’s tramway network and appeared as a schematic plan in Gentry’s article in The Modern Tramway. … http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/02/14/stockport-corporation-tramways-part-2-modern-tramway-vol-12-no-138-june-1949/

The first Hungarian 'railway line' was completed nearly 20 years before the first steam-powered railway in Hungary (which was opened in 1846) on 15th August 1827, and ran from Pest to Kőbánya. It was one of the early horse-drawn 'railways' but was definitely atypical in form!! That railway “ ran on a wooden structure running at an average height of one and a half to two meters above the ground, where the wooden beams were held by densely placed wooden posts. The wheels ran on very closely spaced rails on top of the beams, and the carriages hung down on either side of the entire structure, therefore floating, ie the design was very similar to a monorail .” http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/02/07/a-first-short-lived-horse-powered-railway-in-hungary/

In the Summer of 2024, my wife and I visited Giants' Causeway as part of a few days meandering along the North coast of Ireland. When reading a series of older copies of the Modern Tramway, I came across an article written in 1950. … The Modern Tramway of September 1950 featured an article by DG Evans about one of the very early electric tramways – The Giants' Causeway and Portrush Tramway. His article is quoted in full in this article. Wikipedia tells us that The Giants' Causeway, Portrush, & Bush Valley Railway & Tramway was a “pioneering 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge electric railway operating between Portrush and the Giant's Causeway on the coast of County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The line, 9 1⁄4 miles (14.9 km) long, was hailed at its opening as 'the first long electric tramway in the world'. [2] The Giant's Causeway and Bushmills Railway today operates diesel and steam tourist trains over part of the Tramway's former course.” [3] http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/01/19/the-giants-causeway-and-portrush-tramway-the-modern-tramway-vol-13-no-153

[b]Khartoum, Sudan Again – The Modern Tramway, Vol. 13 No. 156 – December 1950.[/b] The Modern Tramway reported in December 1950 on the purchase by the Sudan Light & Power Company of the new 4-motor bogie tramcars. The bogies and equipment were being “supplied by the English Electric Company and the underframes and bodies by Charles Roberts and Company Ltd., under sub-contract to the English Electric Company. All motor tramcars and trailers [were to] be fitted with air brakes. As will be seen from the drawing reproduced, the body design [was] a pleasing example of modern British practice. The trailer cars [were] of similar outline.” [1:p270] http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/01/18/sudan-khartoum-again-the-modern-tramway-vol-13-no-156-december-1950

Stockport Corporation Tramways – Modern Tramway Vol. 12 No. 138, June 1949 – Part 1 P.W. Gentry wrote about Stockport's trams in the July 1949 issue of Modern Tramway. He says: "Besides possessing several interesting features of its own, the Stockport system today commands added attention as the last last surviving member of that once network of standard gauge undertakings circling Manchester. It is an unusually pleasing system by virtue of its compact and simple arrangement, its focal point being Mersey Square." This article in Modern Tramway caught my attention because for about 9 years I worked in Stockport as a highway engineer. We know that tramways arrived in Stockport in the 1880's from the Manchester direction when "the Manchester Tramways and Carriage Co, Ltd., [opened] a horse-car service into Mersey Square via Levenshulme." In 1889, the Stockport and Hazel Grove Carriage and Tramway Co. Ltd. was formed and "instituted horse car services southwards to Hazel Grove and Edgeley at Easter 1890." http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/01/15/stockport-corporation-tramways-modern-tramway-vol-12-no-138-june-1949-part-1

The Tramways of Marseilles – The Modern Tramway, Vol. 13, No. 150, June 1950 The June 1950 issue of The Modern Tramway carried a report by AA Jackson on the tramways in the French port of Marseilles. Marseilles sits in a natural basin facing West into the Mediterranean and surrounded by hills on three sides. Jackson's article was based on personal observations in 1945 and later information provided by DL Sawyer and NN Forbes. He writes: The suburbs extend to the lower slopes of these surrounding hills and they are connected to the center of the city by a tramway system that is now the largest in France. The original operator was the Compagnie Générale Française des Tramways (Réseaux de Marseille) but the tramways have been under sequester since 1946. The route mileage at the present time is kilometers and the gauge is standard (ie 1.44 meters). http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/01/13/the-tramways-of-marseilles-the-modern-tramway-vol-13-no-150-june-1950/

Part 5 World War Two and The Decline of the Network During the war period, new work was suspended and maintenance was reduced to a minimum; tunnels were used as air raid shelters, and the service schedules were redistributed to avoid the tunnels. Suburban lines acquired considerable importance for the transport of evacuees, especially in the morning and evening. The transport of goods also became important and some older trams were adapted to accommodate the service. Fruit and vegetables were transported to the central market and to the local markets. Building materials for urgent works were carried, as we're a variety of other goods. Examples of these adapted vehicles can be found close to the end of this article. After WW2 and the Decline of the Network The modernization of the tram network, covered in the fourth article in this series, was abruptly interrupted by the Second World War which saw significant damage to the network and rolling stock. After the War the Littorio depot-workshop was renamed for 'Romeo Guglielmetti', a tram driver and martyr of the partisan resistance. The poor condition of much of the network resulted in trams being restricted to main arteries and the introduction of trolleybuses on the rest of the network. Trolleybuses were trailed in 1938 but it was 1949 before planned introduction occurred. obsolescence and degradation of large parts of the network were the reasons that led to the choice of maintaining the tram only on the 'main lines', introducing tolleybuses as replacements for the tram on the secondary lines. In reality the project had already begun before the conflict (the first trolleybuses had been activated in 1938), but only in 1949 was the decision planned in detail. Trams were removed from the central area of the city where trolleybuses were perceived, not being tied to tracks, to be more flexible and better able to negotiate heavy traffic. The lines in the hills were also converted to a trolleybus service (the rubber-wheeled vehicles, having greater grip, guaranteed quicker restarts and with less energy expenditure. The result of these changes was effectively to create two different networks (East and West), linked only by a line along the coast as shown on the map below which shows the tram network as it existed in 1956. http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/12/21/genoas-early-tram-network-part-5-world-war-2-to-its-decline-and-closure-in-the-1960s-and-the-rolling-stock-used-on-the-network/

A Lickey Light Railway – Modern Tramway Vol. 13 No. 146 The mention of 'Lickey' in the railway press usually conjures up thoughts of the Lickey Incline and the bankers needed to enable steam-powered trains to make the climb . In an article written in 1949 (Modern Tramway's Prize Article of 1949) and published in February 1950, BJ Pridmore prophetically proposed a Light Rail solution to anticipated traffic issues on the transport corridor centered on the Bristol Road. Would cities in the UK which already had some reserved tram tracks have benefited from forward thinking that sustained the use of trams through the latter years of the 20th century on tracks and routes which would be suitable for the current wave of Light Rapid Transit/Modern Tramway provision? http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/01/10/a-lickey-light-railway-modern-tramway-vol-13-no-146

Shaker Heights Rapid Transit Lines – Modern Tramway Vol. 12 No. 137, May 1949 Modern Tramway talks, in 1949, of the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit (SHRT) Lines as “A high speed electric light railway entirely on reserved track, connecting a beautiful high class residential district with the centre of a large city. affording such speedy and efficient service that the car-owning suburban residents prefer to use it and park their cars on land provided by the line; a system which makes a handsome profit and has recently taken delivery of 25 of the most modern type of electric rail units in the world [which] are only some of the outstanding facts about Shaker Heights Rapid Transit." http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/01/04/shaker-heights-rapid-transit-lines-modern-tramway-vol-12-no-137-may-1949/

Genoa’s Early Tram Network – Part 4 – World War 1 to World War 2 The first three articles in this series about Genova's Early Tram Network covered the network as it was established by the beginning of the First World War. We have already noted that there were changes to the network which occurred before WW1, particularly the second line to Piazza Sturla in the East, the additional line to Sampierdarena in the West and the Municipal line to Quezzi in the Northeast. In this article we look at the network from World War 1 to the beginning of World War 2. http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/12/18/genoas-early-tram-network-part-4-world-war-1-to-world-war-2/

1825-1925: The Railway Centenary Celebrations at Darlington, 1st to 3rd July 1925 – The Railway Magazine, August 1925 In the year that we mark the bicentenary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. I have found a copy of the August 1925 edition of the Railway Magazine which marked the centenary of the opening of that line. ..... A significant proportion of the August 1925 edition of The Railway Magazine was dedicated to coverage of the Centenary celebrations at Darlington. Given the short timescale between the event and the publication date of the August issue of the magazine (?late July?), and given that modern digital techniques were in no way available, the achievement of publication in such a short time is to be admired. http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/12/31/1825-1925-the-railway-centenary-celebrations-at-darlington-1st-to-3rd-july-1925