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| | History - Waggonways and Railways |
 | | In its fully developed form it consisted, in outline, of (1) a wooden railway sloping gently down to the staiths, and (2) wooden waggons, each holding two or three tonnes of coal, pulled by a horse, and controlled by a man – the waggoner. |
 | | With the invention of steam engines, the cutting-edge technology to tackle this issue came to be the stationary engine. |
 | | The final solution to the problem, however, was the steam locomotive – it had all the advantages: no horses, no ropes to break, and infinitely extensible. |
| www.cix.co.uk /~awhitec/History/Waggonways.htm (1711 words) |
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