,, in Russia 204 ,, Improvement in Third-Class 143 Trent Station 192 Trip, An Unpleasant Trial 72 Tunnel, In a Railway 137 Very Cool 199 Waif, An Extraordinary 245 Ward’s, Artemus, Suggestion 197 Watkin, Sir Edward, on Touting for Business 269 Way, A Quick 138 Way-Leaves 13 Wedding at a Railway Station 166 What are you going to do? 189 Whistle, Steam 98 Wolves on a Railway 197 Wordsworth’s Protest 122 Yankee Compensation Case, A 218 ORIGIN OF RAILWAYS The immediate parent of the railway was the wooden tram-road, which existed at an early period in colliery districts. Mr. Beaumont, of Newcastle, is said to have been the first to lay down wooden rails as long ago as 1630. More than one hundred and forty years elapsed before the invention was greatly improved. Mr. John Carr, in 1776 (although not the first to use iron rails), was the first to lay down a cast-iron railway, nailed to wooden sleepers, for the Duke of Newcastle’s colliery near Sheffield. This innovation was regarded with great disfavour by the workpeople as an interference with the vested rights of labour. Mr. Carr’s life, as a consequence, was in much jeopardy and for four days he had to conceal himself in a wood to avoid the violence of an indignant and vindictive populace. WAY-LEAVES. Roger North, referring to a visit paid to Newcastle by his brother, the Lord Keeper Guildford, in 1676, writes:—“Another remarkable thing is their _way-leaves_; for when men have pieces of ground between the colliery and the river, they sell the leave to lead coal over the ground, and so dear that the owner of a rood of ground will expect £20 per annum for this leave. The manner of the carriage is by laying rails of timber from the colliery down to the river exactly straight and parallel, and bulky carts are made with four rowlets fitting these rails, whereby the carriage is so easy that one horse will draw four or five chaldron of coals, and is an immense benefit to the coal merchants.” SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S PREDICTION OF RAILWAY SPEED.