The expression "railroad" has become very common in Russian. It is used by everyone: from the media to ordinary people. However, many still do not know the history of the emergence of this term.
The concept of "railway" means a strip of land equipped with rails, or the surface of artificial structures (tunnels, bridges, overpasses), which are used for the movement of rail vehicles. Even in Ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome there were gauge roads, which were intended for transportation on them heavy loads. Their structure was as follows: on the road paved with stone, there were two parallel deep grooves, and the wheels of carts rolled along them. In the Middle Ages, there were roads in the mines, which consisted of wooden rails. Wooden carriages moved along them. In 1738, wooden roads were replaced with metal ones. At first they were built from cast iron slabs with wheel recesses, but this was impractical and expensive. In 1767, Richard Reynolds ordered the laying of iron rails on the access roads to the Colbrookdale mines. They differed from modern ones both in shape and size. The wheels of the trolleys were also cast iron. They used the power of a man or a horse to move them along the rails. With the development of trade and the transport system, the railways also developed. Everywhere, railways, similar in appearance to modern ones, began to appear at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Great Britain, France and Belgium. The name of the railway "iron" began three hundred years ago, when it replaced its wooden counterpart. In common parlance, the term "piece of iron" has been used for quite a long time (after the name of the material from which rails and other railway structures are made). A railroad track is a rather complex structure, which consists of lower and upper parts. The lower structure includes the subgrade and artificial structures (overpasses, bridges, pipes, etc.). The topside includes rails and sleepers, rail fasteners, ballast prism.
