Railroads and Railways

Posted by John Crandall Jun 25, 2007

Working on my recent article about the Diolkos and whether or not it should be considered the world's first railroad I ran across an interesting tidbit of lexicon and usage concerning the terms railroad and railway. The Diolkos was a granite road with grooves cut 1.5 meters apart to guide wooden cars carrying portaging ships and their cargo across the isthmus of Corinth. There is some question in the minds of a few who have examined it whether the grooves were cut or worn in from long use, but their general uniformity on remaining sections would tend to imply some sort of engineered design.

Anyway, to get to the point. In America the terms railroad and railway are synonymous with railroad often being the preferred term. The same can be said for Canadian usage with slightly less preference, and the caveat that railway is generally used in legal documents. In British English, railroad is an outdated usage, and from about 1850 railway became the proper term to use when discussing transportation systems made up of tracks and locomotives.

Historically horse drawn coal railroads (I’m an American, and I‘m talking about before 1850) have often been named as the first railroads, but the ancient Greek Diolkos portage road on the Isthmus of Corinth may indeed be the world’s first railway (I’m an American so I can throw caution to the wind and use either term even though this is way before 1850).