{207}The substitution, from about 1767, of iron rails--even though they were only cast-iron rails--for wooden ones became the great event in the development of railways at this period, and gave the newer lines their distinguishing feature as compared with their predecessors. Each fresh line made took the credit of being an "_iron_ rail-way"; and not only did that designation remain in vogue in this country for several decades but it fixed, also, the names of the railway systems in various Continental countries, as shown by the term "Chemin de Fer" in France and Belgium, "Eisenbahn" in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; "Strada ferrata" in Italy, and "Ferrocarril" in Spain (the English equivalent in each instance being "Iron Road"), and by the name of Holland Iron Railway Company ("Hollandsche Yzeren Spoorvegs-maatschappy") by which one of the oldest of the railway companies in Holland--where it was founded in 1837--is still known.[30] One factor in the preference shown for iron rails over wooden ones was the consideration of cost. Alluding to the wooden railways of Durham, in his "General View" of the agriculture of that county, drawn up for the Board of Agriculture in 1810, John Bailey, of Chillingham, says: "Of late years, on account of the high price of wood, iron railways have been substituted." With an increase in the price of timber, owing to the greater scarcity thereof, as the available supplies in the southern counties became more depleted, the time may well have come when, apart from other considerations, it was found cheaper in the north to make cast-iron rails than to import wooden ones. The need for importing so much timber was further diminished, from about 1739, by the substitution, in many instances, of blocks of stone for {208}the wooden sleepers previously used, the iron being either spiked to wooden plugs inserted in holes made in the stones or else fastened by wooden pins into cast-iron "pedestals," as John Bailey calls them, fixed in the stones. Wooden rails did not, however, entirely and immediately give way to iron rails. On the contrary, the old system was so far maintained that, according to "The Industrial Resources of the Tyne," wooden railways could still be found on the collieries in that district as late as 1860.