The Elements Of Railway Economics

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Excerpt from Elements of Railway Economics The Object of this book is to consider railways and railway business from the economic point of view. It will be well, therefore, to begin by understanding precisely what a railway is. Historically and etymologically a railway is merely a road on which rails are laid. Originally the rails, whether of stone or wood or iron, were laid flat on the surface, and vehicles with ordinary wheels were free either to use the special track or to move at large over the whole width of the road. In the next stage of development, the rails were continuous iron plates with flanges on their outer edges to confine the Wheels to the track proper. In the next stage, the rails were raised above the surface and the flange was transferred from the rails to the wheels. The railway thus became specialized it could only be used by special vehicles, and the special vehicles could no longer be used on ordinary roads. Naturally, the railway forsook the public highway and was laid on land allocated to its sole use. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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