New Faster Way To Move Your Goods
The Railway!
Reasons to approve the new railroad:
This new railroad will decrease the cost of shipping and fewer goods to be lost compared to shipping on ships because they occasionally sink. If we switch from the canals to a railroad then we could create a "national market" making the prices from city to city differ slightly.
In 1758 the first railway called The Middleton Railway was allowed to run by Act of Parliament. This railroad carried coal for a very low price from the Middleton to Leeds. The railroad was privately owned and operated. It began as a waggonway using wagons being drawn by horses. During 1799 wooden beams were placed as tracks but then they started to take those off and put down iron edge rails that were 4 feet 1 inch. This was the first railway to have a steam locomotive on its railway in 1812.
Then in 1798 a new railway was built, the Lake Lock Rail Road, some considered it to be the first public railway ever. This railroad opened in 1798 and it was used to carry coal from Outwood to Lake Lock near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, the track was about 3 miles long. The new tracks used edge rails to a gauge of 3 feet 4 3⁄4 inches which were a little smaller than than the Middleton Railway that was built 40 years earlier. The line did not prosper as well as the other line so it eventually closed down in 1836.