This album includes all forms of Early Railway, from the first known, in Ancient Greece, to the beginning of the modern railway around 1825, plus later private or industrial lines that continued in the earlier tradition.
"He who knows where to look can sometimes see a dark line beneath the grass that seems to enter a field through one gate and leave it by another; or perhaps a short tunnel too narrow to have taken road vehicles; a small bridge over a stream, or a narrow embankment across a valley. Maybe here and there he knows of a 'Tram-road Cottage', a 'Tram Inn' or a 'Wharf House' that seems not to be related to any visible remains. They are the remains of a system of horse-drawn railways that, at its greatest extent, exceeded 1,500 route miles. In their heyday there must have been 350 route miles of line in South Wales and several hundred miles more in Northumberland and Durham. There were groups round the limestone quarries and collieries of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, in the Black Country, in industrial Shropshire, and sporadically elsewhere." (from "Stone Blocks & Iron Rails" by Bertram Baxter, published 1966 by David & Charles.)