Talk:History of the railway track

Content Bias
The rail track page contains a number of mistakes and needed enhancing. It is mostly north American oriented and some comments against this have been made, so I have provided this page. There needs to be a lot more written here which I will try to provide over the next couple of weeks. Any comments meantime are welcome. When this page is respectable I will link it from the rail track page and remove the British references from there. Afterbrunel 16:49, 7 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've done a few cleanups on this page, but it is still full of unexplained jargon.  BRIANTIST  (talk) 10:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Points and crossings
I noticed that you have called these switches and crossings. Is this now current British usage? When did this change to the American terms? In Australia it is a mix of terms due to historical developments. A good example is in South Australia, on the tram system they are called points and on the railways switches (they were called points up until the 1930s). Ozdaren 22:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I am aware, they are still officially known as points (UK), switches (US), or turnouts (modelling - both locales) regards, Lynbarn 18:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * although looking for something else, I have coincidentally just found a reference to "switch" in an Ordnance Survey surveying manual of 1905, so maybe the terms were more interchangable than I had imagined! [OS Website] Lynbarn 20:39, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Nearly all these terminology issues are minefields, with no "official" naming, and within the UK different usages apply according to geographical location, and also between engineering departments (track maintainers and control systems maintainers).

Most track engineers in the UK currently use the term "s&c" to describe, er, s&c in general and a set of points is usually called "a switch". Many railway enthusiasts in the UK derive their terminology from model railway manufacturers' catalogues. The term "frog" for example is never used professionally in the UK, the term "crossing" being preferred.

The system has put a tag on the page complaining that it refers mainly to British practice. This was exactly my intention earlier, so as not to bog down the other (railway tracks) page with explanations of the difference between UK and US practice and temrinology. I am not quite sure how to progress this now. --86.9.94.39 (talk) 15:02, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It is useful to the rest of us if you make a point of signing in: then, we know who you are. WP is a global encyclopaedia, and thus requires the usages of all countries (at least English-speaking ones) to be covered.  This can probably be done by explaining the variations in terminology at the beginning of a section and then sticking to one of them.  Peterkingiron (talk) 18:34, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Concentration on historical development
There seems to be a concensus that we need a dedicated page for historical development of railway track. Most of this page concentrates on that anyway, and duplicates parts of the main article "Rail Tracks". I am going to rename this page "Permanent way: historical development" and (over a period) enhance it within that theme. Not a snappy title, I know, but without the word "historical" we are going to get bogged down in Shinkansen and cutting edge and future developments.

I am also going to look at the Plateways and Wagonways pages and try to merge them; 99% of them are about early forms of permanent way -- there isn't very much about the horses or the wagons, and one of them ought to be merged with the other, and the merged page made to be an overview only, with minimal discussion of the technology, which is rightfully here!

This is a huge task; help me please!

--Afterbrunel (talk) 09:36, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

PS: especially with getting the altered redirects sorted out!
 * I have substantially altered this article, to ensure that it covers the full historical development. However, we have two sections on gauge and two on welded rail.  These need to be combined but I lack the necessary knowledge to do so.  A new section is needed on the shoe that goes between the rail and the sleeper.  I hope that what I have done is progress.  I hope that I am not guilty of WP:OR, through using papers to be published in Early Railways 4, which is due to be published about March 2010, including my own paper for it.


 * I would stongly suggest that plateway and wagonway should not be merged, but left as main articles giving more detail of the individual subjects. These are distinct phases in the development of the railway that need their own articles.  Tramway (industrial) is another duplicate article, which proably needs to be merged.  On the other hand, the even broader History of rail transport needs to be coordinated, so that this article becomes a main article to that one.  For an example of how this works, see History of ferrous metallurgy, particularly its later sections.  A further difficulty is of varying terminology with UK.  Wagonway is a northeastern term, with railway (also tramway) being used in Midlands and south Wales.  Plateway is a modern term for a particular kind of railway, with cast iron plates as rails.  I should also have cited Bertram, Stone blocks and iron rails, but do not have a copy.  Peterkingiron (talk) 18:39, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I do have a copy of Stone blocks and iron rails, I'll try and do that over the next few days.Pyrotec (talk) 19:03, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * There seems to be no support for my proposals and I will let them lie. --Afterbrunel (talk) 15:58, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * 1) "Snappiness" is an aspect of titling, but "findability" is another. I found an interesting hardcopy source from the 1800s, and was looking for a place to "land" the information. I had to skim through a couple other *large* articles, until I guessed what this was about. Until I read Peterkingiron's comment above, I was unaware that where I *really* needed to land was wagonway. (It's "hidden" as a Main article under "Edged rails", but that's misleading, because early wagonways were not invariably tracked.) The material's organization is not intuitive to someone who is modestly familiar with railway tech. (I.e., me.)


 * There is confusion. In Rail tracks, "Bullhead rail" redirects...to the the same article (!), but Grooved rail, does not. "Edge rail" redirects to Rail profile. The Tramway (industrial) article says it ("tramways") is a synonym for Wagonway! And then it has a link to Tramway track!! And even the far afield Rail transport article has a strongly related "Pre-steam" para.


 * Can we create an infobox, or a "master table of contents"? Rail tracks has a bullet list heading that direction.


 * 2) What I was *really* trying to do was find a place to "land" some extended material on the evolution from planks and stone to rail. In my encyclopedia source, a natural historical progress is described that had not quite occurred to me before. That broad historical perspective would fit better into an article with several of the above articles merged. I *do not* think that's a sufficient reason to massively reorganize these articles; the problems of duplication of material and the casual reader's difficulty of finding all the to-the-point information, however, are sufficient. Thoughts? Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (talk) 22:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I do not know what your "encyclopaedia source" is, but some of the material that has got inot the articles has been seriously misleading. This leads me to suspect that some of the reference works are inaccurate or over-simplistic; or it may be that WP authors have failed to understand the changes that have taken place.  I have another issue that needs to be addressed: When were the first cast iron wheels? Does any one know of published work on the subject.  I saw MS material last week concerning the purchase of cast iron wheels (perhaps the first in the area) in Cumbria.
 * I should have said that the reference was to the 1730s. Peterkingiron (talk) 13:14, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Another problem is the differing use of terminology, both in different periods and different parts of Britain (let alone America). For example, tramway (and tram) now refers to a light rail passenger transport system.  Historically, it was a regional term (perhaps in south Wales) for what in the northwest was a waggonway.   The Midlands they were often called railways, but industrial archaeologists shy away from using that term, because it is used for the  modern (post-c.1830) locomotive hauled system.
 * An navbox template would certainly be a good idea, but we still need to sort out what articles there should exist; what articles should survive merely as redirects, etc. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * What makes this especially tantalizing is that the quality of material and the writing is so good. (As is often the case with Wiki train-related articles, I must say.) The fact the organization is such a challenge is all the more reason it would be useful to tackle.
 * At this point I think it's more the organization that needs work, rather than the content, as such.
 * Terminology. Unfortunately, it's one of those situations confusing readers who assume words only have clear, discrete meanings. We can avoid having the articles bogged overall by semantics by a section quoting historical sources, such as the The Oxford English Dictionary for meanings. (Perhaps that's one reason to emphasize British English, rather than American English. Another is that America's history in this regard is much briefer.)
 * The insight I got from the encyclopedia is that there's a gradual progression from pavement to rails — and it wasn't always toward rails. I.e., there were reasons to have wheels that could move off the "way". The encyclopedia gives an example (with rail cross-section) of rails in London where wheels were allowed to move on and off the tracks. This is how "ways" must have been for much of recorded history. It's a small insight, but for me an important one. (I remember reading something about this same problem in ancient Rome, but I can't quite remember what the issue was...something about it being recognized that wheel ruts could be "too deep".) Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (talk) 02:51, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The period that I was refering to did not have "trains". I was referring to horse-hauled traffic, often with a single waggon.  Peterkingiron (talk) 13:14, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Walla Walla
I have reverted to remove the following section, because it is not about development, but about a reversion to the system in use in the mid 18th century. It is irrelevant here, but may have a place somewhere: "Another alternative borne of scarcity was a 30-mile wooden railway linking Walla Walla, Washington to the Columbia River in 1875. Lacking the steel required to create a more conventional railway, locals used timber floated from the Yakima Valley. The timber was cut into 16 foot long wooden rails, and these were covered with 2-inch-wide strap iron to prevent the rails from wearing out." Peterkingiron (talk) 14:18, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Duplicate
I can't see even a hair splitting difference between Permanent way and Rail tracks .. Therefore one should be merged into the other. ok so one says it's historical - none of this is in the slightest bit clear, there's no link from "rail tracks" to "permanent way" I can see, the link the other way is not clear. It's not clear why the historical one is called what it is - it's not a historical term. There's only one link in Template:Rail tracks.

It's utterly confusing to navigate, with unclear titles. Can someone please sort this out, or at least give a suggestion on a way to make it clearer. (If nothing happens I'll move this article to "Rail tracks (historical)" and fix the template and links) There's got to be a better way? heers.87.102.34.211 (talk) 23:10, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Of course there's no such thing as "rail tracks" anyway - it's a Wikipedia fudge to avoid choosing one of two correct terms: "railroad tracks" in North America and "railway tracks" in the rest of the world. I am also excluding "train tracks", a term used by ignorant journalists and dentists! On a more serious note, there is a slight difference between "permanent way" and "track": permanent way = track + formation + lineside fencing and signs. But this is not significant enough to warrant separate articles. We should have one article on "permanent way" with sections on each area and, if necessary, links to any main articles. --Bermicourt (talk) 23:26, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * ok, so which is best "Permanent way" or "Rail tracks" (assuming either can be expanded to include fencing etc). I'd assume "permanent way", but is it used in all countries.?
 * The obvious solution is to have "train tracks" (sic) and "train tracks (history)" with either title, which ever is best.
 * ok so I've expanded and inserted Template:Rail tracks. It's now basically "rail infrastructure" and should contain the "level 1" articles for this topic. Please correct mistakes etc. (There's a small amount of overlap with railway signalling which already has an expansive template Template:Railwaysignalling so no need to expand too much into that sphere.)
 * I'm tempted to WP:BOLD and move Permanent way to Rail tracks (history). Personally I think that permanent way is a better title for both, but it may be a little obscure.?
 * On conclusion I think this should be moved to permanent way, and permanent way moved to permanent way (history).
 * I need to change the tags.Sf5xeplus (talk) 00:37, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I would prefer permanent way and permanent way (history). The possibility of having to expand the the articles to cover other aspects of Permanent Way, such as signalling and fencing, is a small price to pay for avoiding a transatlantic spat over names.  Peterkingiron (talk) 14:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry I should have linked to the discussion at Rail tracks (linked to from Permanent way (current)). I proposed "permanent way" for that but there was too much objection on the grounds that it was a too technical term (I'm not sure it's used at all in N. America), and thus difficult to find for non-expert readers. The page will probably be moved to Track (rail transport) given the comments there; as a compromise to avoid differences in english usage. What that means for this page is not certain. Given the current UK bias it's probably not yet an issue.Sf5xeplus (talk) 15:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Whilst you're here - do you know anything about "strap rails" - someone usually knowledgeable asked about them, which suprised me because I thought it was a common term. I'm beginning to wonder if they were a purely N.American invention? Where they ever used in Europe or Britain, and did they have a different name. (Strap rails are wooden rails with 'straps' of cast, wrought or rolled iron nailed to the top to improve the rail..) Sf5xeplus (talk) 15:44, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Fish bellied rail
I've created a redirect from "fish bellied rail" to here, if this is not the right target please correct. Thanks. I couldn't find an article.Sf5xeplus (talk) 04:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

UK centric
ok. So sorry to be a pain for pointing this out but sections such as Permanent_way_(history) is just about the UK, it's not just bias, ie it's written for an article on UK railways. Europe + North America please, and references as well.! Sf5xeplus (talk) 04:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Possible merger, thoughts needed
see Talk:Track_(rail_transport)

Contribution of Cecil J. Allen
Allen's "day job" included checking new rails bought for the LNER. Is this sufficient to give him a paragraph to himself in this history of the permanent way? --Old Moonraker (talk) 14:17, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

"Slewing"
I should mention that I did notice that slew specifically includes a railroad-specific meaning of moving a railway line sideways, so it was actually correct as written, but I think that specialized usage is worth avoiding in a general-purpose encyclopedia. "Shifting" is clearer to a lay audience IMHO. 209.209.238.149 (talk) 22:35, 27 January 2019 (UTC)