ABSTRACT
The predecessors of conventional railways as we know them today are considered to be early ‘trackways’ or ‘wagonways’ that provided the means for guiding a wheeled vehicle along a dened path. The earliest known example of such a system is the Diolkos, a 7 km long stone-paved portage trackway constructed in the sixth century BC near Corinth in ancient Greece. It enabled boats to be moved overland across the Isthmus of Corinth on a trolley hauled by manpower along a curved route that avoided steeper gradients [1]. This innovation replaced a 900 km circumnavigation by sea of the Peloponnese peninsula and continued in use until the rst century AD. Horse-drawn wagonways using cut-stone tracks also rst appeared in ancient Greece, and others can be found on Malta and in various parts of the Roman Empire.
