Modern transportation of passengers and goods could not be imagined without trains, transport devices that revolutionized our industry, human expansion, and the way we can move from one place to another. Such important presence in our history appeared little over 200 years ago, but even then it was apparent that this new transportation paradigm could become one of the mankind’s greatest fights if the technical hurdles of early industrial revolution could be overcomed.
It all began in over 2000 years ago in ancient civilizations of Egypt, Babylon and Greece. Transport of people and goods in those time was done with carts that were pulled by animals (horses or bulls), and their engineers quickly noticed that animals will spend much less energy if the cart was traveling on predetermined path, without possibility for steering or traveling over uneven terrain. To enable this new way of transport, they build roads with pre-built constraints for wheels. These were the world’s first railway tracks, and archeological remains of them can still be found in Italy and Greece. The most famous example of these ancient stone etched “wagonways” can be found in the Isthmus of Corinth, Greece.