Nicholas Wood says that these wooden rails had a length of about six feet, and were five or six inches in thickness, with a breadth of about the same proportions. They were pegged down to sleepers placed across the track at a distance of about two feet apart, so that one rail reached across three sleepers. The spaces between the sleepers were filled in with ashes or small stones, to protect the feet of the horses. The waggons were in the form of a hopper, being much broader and longer at the top than at the bottom. At first all four wheels of the waggon were made either of one entire piece of wood or of two or three pieces of wood fastened together, the rim, in either case, being so shaped as to have on one side a projection, or flange, which would keep the wheel on the rails. This, then, was the earliest example of a _railway_--the fundamental principle of which is, of course, the use of _rails_ to facilitate the drawing or the propulsion of a moving body, and not the particular form of motive power (however great the importance, in actual practice, of this matter of detail) by which the traction is secured. The date of the first "rail-way" (so called) in the form described, and in accordance with the principle mentioned, is uncertain; but Galloway, in his "History of Coal Mining," mentions a document dated 1660 which refers to a sale of timber used in the construction of waggon-ways; while Roger North, writing in 1676, describes the then existing railways in terms which suggest that they were, at that date, a well-established institution. Speaking generally, therefore, one may assume that the pioneer rail-ways were brought {199}into operation somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century--if not still earlier. Taking 1650 as an approximate date, this would mean that the first rail-way must have been made about one hundred and eighty years before the opening of that Liverpool and Manchester line with which the history of railways is often assumed to have begun. Hutchinson speaks of the collieries on the Tyne as being, at the time he wrote (1778), "about twenty-four in number," and he further says of them that they "lie at considerable distances from the river." On account of these considerable distances the colliery managers had to secure way-leaves for their rail-ways from the owners of intervening land, so as to obtain access to the Tyne. Thus Roger North, in the account he gives of the railways in the Newcastle district, says: "When men have pieces of land between the collieries and the rivers, they sell leave to lead coals over their ground, and so dear that the owner of a rood of ground will expect 20l. per annum for this leave." In some instances the total payment for a way-leave seems to have amounted to £500 a year. Statutory powers were not required for the rail-ways so long as they were used only for private purposes, though when they crossed a public road the assent of the local authorities was necessary.