Though the coaching system in this country had attained the highest degree of perfection, a journey from London to Liverpool, previously to the formation of railways, was considered a serious undertaking. The "fast coach," which left London at one o'clock in the day, did not profess to arrive in Liverpool till six o'clock the following evening, and sometimes it did not reach there till ten o'clock at night; and the fare inside was four guineas, besides fees to coachmen and guards. The same distance is now performed in six hours, at one-third the expense, and at one-fourth the fatigue and inconvenience. Railway Locomotion, however, forms no exception to the rule, that most modern inventions have their prototypes in the contrivances of ages past. They were used upwards of two hundred years before locomotive engines were known, or before the steam engine itself was invented. The manifest advantage of an even track for the wheels long ago suggested the idea of laying down wood and other hard, smooth surfaces for carriages to run upon. They were first applied to facilitate the traffic of the heavily laden waggons from the coal pits; the "tramways," as they were called, being formed of timber about six inches square and six feet long, fixed to transverse timbers or "sleepers," which were laid on the road. These original railways were made sufficiently wide for the wheels of the waggons to run upon without slipping off; the plan of having edgings to the rails, or flanges to the wheels, not having been adopted till a later period. To protect the wood from wearing away, broad plates of iron were afterwards fixed on the tramways. Cast iron plate rails were first used in 1767. The flat plates on which the wheels ran were made about three inches wide, with edges two inches high, cast on the near side, to keep the wheels of the "trams" on the tracks. These iron plates were usually cast in lengths of six feet, and they were secured to transverse wooden sleepers by spikes and oaken pegs. The tramways were laid down on the surface of the country without much regard to hills and valleys, the horses that drew the trains being whipped to extra exertion when they came to a hill, and in descending some of the steep inclines, the animals were removed, and the loaded waggons were allowed to descend the hills by their own gravity, the velocity being checked by a break put on by a man who accompanied them.