Hi,

A recent trip to Berlin's excellent technical museum uncovered a couple of artefacts that will be of interest here. To see my photos follow the link below.

The Hungarian wooden cart is clearly very old, but undated, to a much earlier design, with very few metal components.

The German inscription on the the iron wagonway cart approximately reads as:

Rail cart built in Plymouth for the Merthyr
Tydfil to Aberdare Junction railway in 1800. The unflanged wheels run on flanged track, pinned to raw concrete (stone?) sleepers.

Rail length 1 yard (0.914 m)
Weight 27.25 kg.
Gauge with regard to the road wagon 1.524 m.

The Merthyr Tydfil Railway hosted Trevithick's first attempt to run a
steam locomotive.



https://photos.app.goo.gl/xP3brRXRKaWGmxvr7 

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Nice shots - I saw them last time I took a trip to Berlin, only an hour or so by train from here in Hanover.

Slightly adjusted translation (it's my job)

L-shaped cast iron rails

Curr type 1776*

Rails from the Merthyr Tydfil to Aberdare Junction railway built for the Plymouth Ironworks & Collieries in 1800.
Laid on unhewn stone sleepers for carts with unflanged wheels.

Rail length: 1 yard
Weight: 27,25 kg
Gauge: 5 ft – to cater for the gauge of road carts

(I wasn't aware that there was a standard gauge for carts - you learn something new every day!)

*John Curr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Curr 

Trevithick
The world's first locomotive-hauled railway journey took place on 21 February 1804, when Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales
Cheers
Y-Man

Rail length: 1 yard
Weight: 27,25 kg
Gauge: 5 ft – to cater for the gauge of road carts

(I wasn't aware that there was a standard gauge for carts - you learn something new every day!)


Y-Man

Interestingly, or otherwise, the 5ft gauge became known as Russian Gauge and was pre-dated by the same width used on the Wylam Wagonway (could " road cart" be a translation variation of wagon way yorkshireman?). Whereas Huntingdon Beaumont, who was instrumental in introducing horse-drawn wagonways to Northumberland, used a gauge of 4ft 6in at the Wollaton mine near Nottingham in 1603.

Jim

Rail length: 1 yard
Weight: 27,25 kg
Gauge: 5 ft – to cater for the gauge of road carts

(I wasn't aware that there was a standard gauge for carts - you learn something new every day!)


Y-Man

Interestingly, or otherwise, the 5ft gauge became known as Russian Gauge and was pre-dated by the same width used on the Wylam Wagonway (could " road cart" be a translation variation of wagon way yorkshireman?). Whereas Huntingdon Beaumont, who was instrumental in introducing horse-drawn wagonways to Northumberland, used a gauge of 4ft 6in at the Wollaton mine near Nottingham in 1603.

Jim

Hello Jim,

Waggon (with gg) is also the German word for wagon in the sense of cart and railway waggon/wagon.

Strassen=road /street
Fuhrwerk = carriage, cart, wagon/waggon//horse and cart (Pferdefuhrwerk).
A "Fuhre" is a load

It seems that there is no German word for plateway. All kinds of railways are basically described as Bahnen, Eisenbahnen = iron tracks/iron ways or iron roads (like the French Chemin de Fer), and later as a Bahn (plural Bahnen) as in the German national railway "Deutsche Bahn", the DB in DB Schenker (a family from Hanover, where I live, one of whose kids is the singer of The Scorpions, whose song Wind of Change was the hit that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall.

From Bahn, we also get Strassenbahn = street railway = tram or tramway (In Austria Trammbahn),
Schmalspurbahn = narrow gauge railway
Feldbahn/Lorenbahn = light railway, narrow gauge, in peat or sand & gravel works, with lightweight trucks called Loren - usually tipping trucks.
BTW: A mine railway is a Grubenbahn

Cheers
Y-Man