Railroad News
Huntingdon Beaumont (c. 1560 – 1624) is credited with the invention of the modern railway. His work led to the first recorded wagonway in England. Called the first true railway, Beaumont incorporated a flange on the inside to keep the wheel on a wooden track. The invention led to the modern train wheel still in use today.
The Leiper Railroad, designed and built between 1809 and 1810 by merchant Thomas Leiper, connected his Stone Saw-Mill and Quarries on Crum Creek to his Landing on Ridley Creek, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Leiper's railway, the first documented railroad in America, was made of wooden wooden rails on wooden ties at 8-foot spacing.
In 1825, Locomotion No. 1 was the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Its historical significance is based, not on its design inovation, but on the fact that it the first locomotive to run on a public railway.