2nd Edition

Chapter 3
Rolling Stock
3.1 The Definition of Railway Rolling Stock
It is always useful at the outset of consideration of a subject to pause for
a moment and to ponder the definitions, attributes range and scope of the
matter.
Rolling stock used on railways in the earliest days evolved from carriages
and wagons which ran on highways to carry both people and bulk materials.
As early as the sixteenth century wooden wheeled carts were used in
mines and quarries running on longitudinal timber rails. With the progressive
evolution of the skills and crafts of the wheelwright, metalworker and
the ironmaker, wheels improved through various phases from simple rough
turned wooden spools through spoked and rimmed construction to fully
cast and turned metal wheels.
Similarly, body construction and springing, particularly for passenger
carrying vehicles, relied very heavily on the experience gained in the construction
of stagecoaches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At
the end of the eighteenth century, horse drawn trams running on metal
rails began to appear in a number of European cities. These horse drawn
tramways were literally to pave the way for development of railways when
steam power began to be developed early in the 1800s. One has only to look
at illustrations of early passenger coaches to see how closely they resemble
the road vehicles of the previous century.
As railway experience was gained, the design of rolling stock also
evolved. Springing, body structure, wheels and axles all are subject to varying
loads and stresses, when comparing slower speeds on rough roads to
much faster speeds on railways, with a comparatively smoother ride.
Railway rolling stock generally runs on hard wheels on hard rails. The
wheels are not only supported by the rails but are guided by them. The
only exception to this is for a small number of metros where rubber tyres
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