The ongoing (and very interesting!) post about Canadian railways leads me to post a question I’ve wanted to post for a while:
Re: Railway vs. Railroad. I was taught that Railway was the more British and Railroad the more American. I suppose Canadians would gravitate more toward Railway, as I believe most Commonwealth countries use that word, leaving Railroad to us Yanks.
Now, the late lamented C&NW ran on the left and used semaphores. Was it indeed a RailWAY and regardless of name, did it have any particular exposure to British nomenclature and/or practices? Financing out of London, that kind of thing?
Really, there are enough differences in terminology between the British and the American, has anyone ever compiled a glossary? [;)]
Both are used in both Commonwealth and the US – in fact, the Central Vermont used both at one time or another, depending on which round of bankruptcy had just happened – since ‘Central Vermont Railway’ is not the same company as ‘Central Vermont Railroad’!
Keep in mind that someone once said – I think maybe Churchill – that the United States and the United Kingdom were two great countries divided by a common language…
Chicago & North Western was definitely a Railway before it was a Transportation Company.
To add to Jamie’s observation, both the Chesapeake & Ohio and the Pere Marquette were “Railroad” and “Railway” at different times in their lives. I’m sure there are plenty of others.
And that whole business about British influence on the CNW refuses to remain properly buried. Lots of railroads (nearly all of them, I’d venture) used semaphore signals in some places at one time or another. Usually, the subject of British influence on CNW is brought about because its trains kept to the left in double-track territory. That has been explained–very plausibly–on this and other sites.
The thing about the English language is that it is blessed with more words than any other language, so there are often more than one word for the same thing. Furthermore, I believe one or two early lines in England were called “Rail Road”; it was only by the middle of the 19th century that railway became the most popular word used to describe such things here. In Welsh, their word for railway “Rheilffordd” translates literally as rail road whilst the French word “Chemin de Fer” literally translates as “Iron Road” as do the equivalent words in Spanish, Italian and Gaelic.
We sometimes use ‘way’ as a term for routes between places in Britain - ‘byways’ are minor roads, ‘motorways’ are the equivalent of interstates in the US, and old Roman roads normally have names ending in ‘way’.
So I suspect ‘railway’ seemed the natural term to use back in 19th century Britain.
We use ‘road’ in the railway context here sometimes - trains ‘get the road’ when they are let out onto the main line from yards etc.
In the United States, various operating companies went from “Railroad” to “Railway” or vice versa as a result of financial re-organizations of various types (Chapter 77, change of ownership, etc.). One interesting case is the Indiana Rail Road, the regional based in Indianapolis. It uses the two-word version for legal reasons, perhaps to differentiate it from the corporate remnants of the interurban Indiana Railroad.
I worked for a Canadian railway company and this was always a bone of contention, they insisted WAY was correct for the company and went so far as to publish a company newsletter explaining the difference between a railway and railroad, if only I would have kept it, in legalese it is VERY important to be correct, I remember some of the differences had to do with land, hotels, and other issues relating to operating a rail system, it was always a topic in the office.
My dictionary defines way[/] as: “a road, path or highway affording passage from one place to another.”
The same dictionary defines road as: "an open way, generally public, for the passage of vehicles, persons, and animals.
Railroad: 1 - A road composed of parallel steel rails supported by ties and porviding a track for locomotive drawn trains and other roling stock. 2 - The entire system of railroad track, together with the land, stations, rolling stock, and other property used in rail transportation.
[i]Railway: 1- A railroad, esp one operated over a limited area, as a street railway. 2 - A track providing a runway for wheel equipment.
Here is another thing that is unusual about the C & NW name. It was Chicago and North Western (two words) not Chicago and Northwestern (one word) which is the way it was often incorrectly written.