Terminology- a tramway was (in this context) a line used industrially as distinct for a passenger line. They could be either plateways (where the rail is flanged, fashionable, and bad engineering, for about 40 years from the later 18th century) or edge railed- where the wheels are flanged and run on the raised surface of the rails. Edge rails had been used from the early 17th century (wooden then), and again came to prominence from the early 19th century in first cast, then wrought iron as engineers realised the design flaws of the plateways. They had never really gone out of use, on Tyneside in particular.

The Peak Forest Tramrway (1796 ish) was a plateway; the Avon and Gloucester Railway (1830 or so) was edge railed and was known locally as the Dramway.

The "tram" in Outram was a complete coincidence (or nominative determinism?), being derived from a word meaning a beam and in use long before the Outrams were around.


This monstrosity ran on the Penydarren Tramroad (a plateway) in South Walses in the 1830s. An apt image for Halloween.