Horse-drawn Trains
Almost all early railways used horses as the motive power for trains before the invention of the steam locomotive.
The Ballocheney Railway used a “dandy-cart” on the two “Ballochney Inclines” each having a grade of around 1 in 23 for distances of about 1000 yards. A descending train was connected by rope and pulley to an ascending train; the weight of the downhill train pulled the up hill train up the hill. See Funicular.
The unique geography of the Ffestiniog Railway may have had some impact on allowing this imaginative solution to be applied to a large percentage of its total haulage; a relatively long section of track, running exclusively between two points, where a relatively constant and continuous downhill grade could be maintained.
Read more about this topic: Dandy Waggon
Famous quotes containing the word trains:
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)