Talk:Wollaton Wagonway

Phrasing
Another possibilty is you phrase the intro it like "the crucial step according to the British historian M.J.T. Lewis". Otherwise, your strong word choice contains too much of interpretation and assumption, which you first have to prove to be correct and accepted unanimously. Regards Gun Powder Ma 20:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I can live with either 'crucial' or 'significant'. Some WP articles imply that there were earlier railways.  In fact the German "hund" used a quite different system: it had flat wheels running on a planked roadway, with a pin pointign donw inot a groove in the roadway.  Both M. J. T. Lewis and R. S. Smith identify Wollaton as the first transport system with rails.  I have something new to say on the subject, but for the moment that is WP:OR, and thus not appropriate to appear in WP.  Nevertheless, the Wollaton Wagonway is the earliest documented reference to the use of rails.  The problem with timelines is that they appear to imply an inevitable historical progression where it was not inevitable at all.  I should add that I recently simplified the text, with a view to making it more encyclopaedic in tone.  Before doing so, I examined several of the articles cited.  If I removed any fact, please restore it.  Peterkingiron 22:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Significance
It would be nice to have someone knowledgeable expound more detail on exactly why this waggonway was significant. In particular, for the non-expert, it can be perplexing to guess what is meant by "overland" when other historical rail systems seemed to go over the land (is there any other way?) and the terminology "surface level" can again be unclear to the non-expert.

In summary, it seems you have the details of significance mentioned, but could be improved in clarity. Perhaps even an illustration might help avoid confusion as to why it is, exactly, this waggonway is of import. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.144.236.150 (talk) 22:58, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree - why "overland"? Does it distinguish it from the earlier German mine sort-of-railways mentioned in wagonway? As far as I can tell, this is truly the first known railway. --NE2 01:33, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Is this in contrast with "underground"? Earlier German ways underground used a different system and are not "rail" ways.  At Early Railways 4 conference, I made the case for this having the earliest document, but not in fact being the first.  I have not added this to WP, and will not until the conference volume appears.  Peterkingiron (talk) 19:02, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

As the intial originator of this page I wrote overland to distinguish it from underground where "hund" systems previously existed and were very much an embryonic railway in that the wheels did run on rails (albeit flat planks) with guidance by a mix of pin and the skill of the operator. Hund systems were also very short haul, the WW at two-miles was substantially longer. As my 2012 paper to ERC 5, which followed up both Dr Lewis' and Dr King's earlier papers, outlines the Wollaton may not have been the first (we simply don't know) but it is the first for which there is surviving provenance. We also know that Huntingdon Beaumont took this development with him to Northumberland and from there over the next two centuries waggonways in the Beaumont style evolved, morphing into iron edge rail sytems which spread worldwide. Think of the WW like the lowest portion of a tree's trunk; the roots may be uncertain and unseen but the onward and upward growth of the trunk is clear as are the later branches and developments.23:33, 31 December 2014 (UTC)Johnrnew (talk)