Industrial tramways are a type of (usually) lightly engineered railway that were especially commonplace in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when appropriate rail-based transport technologies were evolving and it became evident that transporting of goods more efficiently made economic sense. A related name is "tram road": a road with wooden, stone, or metal tracks for wheels, used by wagons in mining districts. Light tramway vehicles, either singly or in multiple, were variously pushed by humans, pulled by animals (especially horses and mules), hauled by cable from a stationary engine, or – especially in more recent times – hauled by small, light locomotives. Often tramways were not intended to be permanent. The quality of track varied from timber placed on bare earth (such as in forestry locations or quarries) to more robust configurations closer to those of narrow-gauge railways (such as in factories and mines). Often, tramway infrastructure was considered adequate at the time it was built but later came to be considered insubstantial. However, some examples exist of tramways that evolved from small beginnings to become heavy-haul railways but are still referred to as tramways.[note 1]
Notes edit
- ^ Notable are Australia's Iron Knob Tramway, on which the largest steam locomotive in Australia at the time was in service, and the Silverton Tramway, which took over haulage of trains of ore cars conveyed by the South Australian Railways to the border with New South Wales.[1]
References edit
- ^ Lusk, P.M. (18 May 1954). "What Is a railway?". The Advertiser. Vol. 96, no. 29, 825. Original, Adelaide; digital reproduction, Canberra: Advertiser Newspapers Limited. p. 10. Retrieved 2 October 2021.