Talk:Wollaton Wagonway

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[edit] Phrasing

Another possibilty is you phrase the intro it like "the crucial step according to the British historian M.J.T. Lewis". Otherwise, your strong word choice contains too much of interpretation and assumption, which you first have to prove to be correct and accepted unanimously. Regards Gun Powder Ma 20:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I can live with either 'crucial' or 'significant'. Some WP articles imply that there were earlier railways. In fact the German "hund" used a quite different system: it had flat wheels running on a planked roadway, with a pin pointign donw inot a groove in the roadway. Both M. J. T. Lewis and R. S. Smith identify Wollaton as the first transport system with rails. I have something new to say on the subject, but for the moment that is WP:OR, and thus not appropriate to appear in WP. Nevertheless, the Wollaton Wagonway is the earliest documented reference to the use of rails. The problem with timelines is that they appear to imply an inevitable historical progression where it was not inevitable at all. I should add that I recently simplified the text, with a view to making it more encyclopaedic in tone. Before doing so, I examined several of the articles cited. If I removed any fact, please restore it. Peterkingiron 22:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)