The history of the railways as we know today spans long to the 18th century and beyond. The guiding system related to today's railways was invented most likely two thousand years earlier (depending on the definition).


It is said that the first "rail" related guiding systems, grooves in the limestone, were built around 600 BC in the ancient Greece, where crossing the isthmus in Corinthos saved substantial sailing distance on the water ways around the peninsula in the Mediterranean. Normally only goods where transported this way, but ultimately even whole ships were moved when need be. Wagons were used to transport the goods.

Similar arrangements existed also elsewhere in the Mediterranean Europe.


The Romans were excellent road builders with their vast resources. Some of their roads with stone surface initially had grooves, where the waggon wheels would easily stay. Many of these were built at the cities, where it was important that the carts would be guided at the exact spot on the narrow roads between the buildings.

At the time the industrialization in Europe was still at its infancy and refining many raw materials as well. The invention of how to refine iron in a large scale, industrialization with its transportation needs and the development of the high pressure steam machine later added speed to the machinery of the development, chancing everything. Roman actually were able to create a very early steam powered machine, but found it useless!

  On the left and right one of the paved roads running on the foothills of the Alps in France. It is doubtful the grooves on this road were made there intentionally, but certainly they help guiding the cart on the demanding stretch of the path. The Roman roads were relatives to this kind of paved alpine path.

Early Mine Railroads
Mines were and still are very dependent on the steady transportation of the raw materials in an out of the sites underground. This need fed for the innovativity in the early mines and soon the Leitnagel

Hund type "plank railways" were invented. The wooden supports were relatively level, so a cart could be pushed and pulled on it. Wood was also widely available for most areas and was inexpensive to use, a major factor for the mines survival.

  On the left is a modern "Leitnagel hund" kind of system used for plank railways. The groove in the middle provides guidance as the wheels under vehicle take care of supporting. This Leitnagel type plank way is located in the Skanssen amusement park in Stockholm, Sweden. Picture by Ilkka Siissalo.

Like discussed above, the Romans in fact invented a very early steam powered machine, but found it useless. It took then a whole of 1500 years before the invention found its use through refining and rethinking its structure.

In 1629 Giovanni Branca described and draw in his practical guide pocket book the steam machine which was very much like the ancient ones. Here the steam source however was stationary blowing boiler fed by fire under it. A paddle wheel was located in front of the outcoming steam pipe. A very ingenious start for the new era of using steam!

As we may imagine, the power provided by this kind of machine was quite limited and something better needed to be combined here to make the machine more "every day" device.

This better technology came in the form of pressurized steam used in cylinders where it was desperately needed at the dawn of industrialization: mines. Many mines for the time had to use lots of resources to keep the shafts dry, often very enxpensive and sometimes impossible task. Though the "walking" steam pumps of the time may seem quite simple, even primitive to today's observer, they in fact were high tech of the time.

When evaluating if this machine was primitive or not, please observe that in the early 18th century there were not high tech tools, machines ort 3D printers to build it. Every inch of the metals used on the machines at the time had to be created and perfected painstakingly by hand. So every machine at the time seemed like a huge endeavour. Of course the rewards often were big too, so more steam powered machines started appearing.