In the days of horse drawn waggon-ways it was not unusual to see wooden railway lines laid before wrought iron rails were introduced. Naturally iron was very expensive and in short supply and so lightly used horse drawn lines continued to be laid using wooden rails.
With the introduction of steam traction, most railway promoters recognised that iron rails were essential, but there were proposals to lay wooden railway lines in Britain because wood was so much cheaper and readily available. The promoter was William Prosser. He built a demonstration railway on Wimbledon Common which was reported in the Illustrated London News in 1845.
See:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/...1&s=kitchen
The wheels were flangeless and rode on the top of hardwood timbers, guidance being supplied by flanged wheels in front and behind each vehicle set at 45 degrees to the vertical. The system did work and was patented.
Subsequently Mr Prosser managed to sign up the proposed Guilford and Woking Railway to be built to this system and a lithograph was circulated showing the proposed system. Science and Society publish a copy of this document:
http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results...&imagepos=5
When the LSWR took over the proposed Guilford and Woking Railway before it was built, they had to pay Mr Prosser the then huge sum of £20,000 as compensation for cancelling his contract and the Guilford Junction Railway as it became known was laid with steel rails. I have found two more instances in Europe where Mr Prosser succeeded in persuading promoters to opt for his system because it was so much cheaper than iron or steel. At that time proper engineers were few and far between, and financiers who were principly interested in profit could easily be duped it seems. In each case Mr Prosser did receive compensation when the contracts were cancelled.
What exactly happened after that is not clear, but Mr Prosser went on to promote some shaky mining enterprises in Wales with a certain Mr Davies. There are references to schemes for wooden railways in the USA but no hard evidence, until a scheme was proposed and taken up for a wooden railway in New Zealand in 1863. The Oreti Railway was built and three steam locomotives were supplied from Ballarat in Australia running with patent guide wheels.
The first one, Lady Barkly, was suppled by a Mr J R Davies and built by Hunt and Opie:
http://www.trainweb.org/loggingz/hunt.html. Subsequently two larger ones were built by the Soho Foundry:
http://www.trainweb.org/loggingz/soho.html
Within three years they destroyed the wooden track that they were built to operate on, which is not very surprising. The failure of the railway bankrupted the Council of the Province of Southlands which had invested £100,000 in the venture. The Oreti Railway was rebuilt with steel rails and the Kingston Flyer runs on the preserved section near Lake Wakitipu.
A non-working replica of the Lady Barkly locomotive is on display at Bluff near Invercargill.
Now that really was a weird idea.
Colombo
