“Aye, aye, sir,” said our ancient friend, “Pedlars and pack-horses were the means of locomotion and the medium of news in my day; and if we travelled, it was in the four-wheeled covered waggon, over roads with three or four feet ruts. Lord, sir, I remember, in good old George the Third’s time, when turnpike gates were first put up, there was a great outcry against them. Before that, roads went just where they liked, and there was a blacksmith’s shop at every corner to repair the damage done in bumping over the large stones. Why, sir, in this ere Dale, I can remember when there was no road through it but the tram-road. The road then was over rocks and along the brow of the hill—a bridle road only. There never was such a thing as a one-horse cart seen in the Dale till just before the road was made to Wellington; and then, as I can remember, the road was so narrow that every carter carried a mattock to stock the road wider, in order to pass, if he met another.” The old man described the construction of those primitive forerunners of that iron network which now spreads its meshes over the entire kingdom, one of which, much worn on the one side by the flange of the wheels is before us. It has a square hole at the end, for the purpose of being pegged to the sleeper. Down the steep banks that enclose the Dale inclined planes were laid with rails of plain oblong pieces of wood, six feet in length, eight inches in width, and four inches in depth, and down these, by means of ropes, waggons by their superior gravity brought up the empty ones to be refilled with minerals which were conveyed for the use of the works. The speed was regulated by a brake made to press, not as now upon the barrel at the top, but upon the wheels of the descending waggons. The man thus regulating their speed, was the jigger, and the hill leading from Coalbrookdale to Wellington, where one of these inclines was situate, became “The Jigger’s Bank.” (Sometimes called the Jig-house Bank, because, of a house there.) In addition to this railway for the purpose of supplying the furnaces, there was another, by which the furnaces at the top were connected with the foundry at the centre; and rails, first of wood, and then of iron, continued for many years to be used, facilitating the transport of heavy materials from place to place.