1. A track of parallel rails (originally flat planks of wood, afterwards lengths of stone or plates of iron), forming wheel-tracks for vehicles; a tram-road. b. Now spec. A track with rails flush with the road surface, laid in a street or road, on which tram-cars are run, for the conveyance of passengers. (For the distinction between tramway and tram-road in parliamentary language, see quot. 1901.)
1825. E. Mackenzie, Hist. Northumbld., I. 147, note. From recent experiments … it has been ascertained that upon an edge-railway one horse can work with a much greater load … than upon a tram-way.
1830. Mechanics’ Mag., XIII. 73 (title), Stone tramway in the Commercial Road…. Tramway … has been hitherto generally used to designate that description of iron railway in which flat rails or tram-plates level with the ground are employed.
1840. Penny Cycl., XX. 33/2. Stone tramways consist of wheel-tracks formed of large blocks of stone, usually granite, the surface of which is made so smooth as to offer very little resistance to the rolling of the wheels.
1846. R. Ritchie, Railways, 12. Tracks of continuous stone rails…. In London … such tramways for short distances have long been in general use.
1854. W. H. D. Longstaffe, Darlington, 359. Wooden tramways still continued to be used … to almost our own day.
1861. Smiles, Engineers, II. 201. The adoption of tramways all round the quays. Ibid. (1862), III. 88. He [Trevithick] had the wooden tramway taken up in 1808, and a plate-way of cast iron laid down instead.
1882. Rep. to Ho. Repr. Prec. Met. U.S., 449. The ore is delivered by cars on a tramway, the descending car drawing up the empty one.
b. 1850. G. F. Train, Observ. Street Railw., 3. I was surprized to find the progress made [in U.S.] in what the Americans term Street Railways, [and] the English tramways.
1863. P. Barry, Dockyard Econ., 272. So early as 1801, Rennie reported upon the project of an iron rail or tramway between the east and west ends of London.
1864. Musgrave, Ten Days in Fr. Parsonage, I. i. 31. We still travel [more cheaply] on the French tramway.
1883. Pall Mall G., 14 Sept., 4/1. The first long electric tramway in the world will be opened to-day in county Antrim…. The Portrush electric tramway.
1901. Standing Orders Ho. Lords, Priv. Bills, 7. In these Orders … the term ‘tramway’ means a tramway laid along a street or road; the term ‘tramroad’ means a tramway laid elsewhere than along a street or road.
1911. Edin. Rev., July, 52. Tramways pulse and jingle over the old Tournai Causeway.
2. transf. A cable or system of cables on which suspended cars travel. U.S.
1872. Raymond, Statist. Mines & Mining, 318. The tram-way consists of two wire cables, each of which is six-tenths of an inch in diameter, extending from the lower adit on the Stevens lode to the base of the hill…. All the ore will be sent to the base of the mountain by the tram-way.
3. attrib. and Comb., as tramway car, company, draught (DRAUGHT sb. 1), driver, man; tramway plate, a plate-rail, = TRAM-PLATE; tramway terms, the terms on which a municipality is legally able to acquire an existing tramway belonging to a private firm or company: see quot. 1902.
1825. Tramway plate [see PLATE sb. 8].
1872. Gentl. Mag., Sept., 359. Asphalte pavements and tramway cars are modern blessings. Ibid. (1874), April, 454. In the great suburban boulevards the tramway-cars make locomotion alike swift, cheap, nasty, and dangerous.
1877. Gen. C. E. Gordon, Lett., 19 Nov. (in Pearson’s Catal. [1888], 17). Camels will do well enough for tramway draughts.
1885. Pall Mall G., 22 Sept., 11/1. The concession allotted to the so-called tramway steamers [at Venice] is given for five years’ time.
1894. Westm. Gaz., 6 July, 6/2. He had always advocated fair play in dealing with the Tramway Companies.
1897. Daily News, 7 April, 2/2. The tramway men themselves did not desire their hours and wages altered.
1901. D. B. Hall & Ld. A. Osborne, Sunshine & Surf, i. Down one of whose funnels, they say, two tramway cars can run abreast.
1902. A. Chamberlain, in Daily Chron., 12 Dec., 8/7. Right to purchase … plant … useful for Post Office purposes on what are commonly known as ‘tramway terms’—that is, at its fair market value as plant in use.
Hence Tramway v., trans. to furnish with a tramway; intr. to travel by a tramway or tram.
1871. Ruskin, Fors Clav., iv. 24. The roads themselves beautifully public-tramwayed perhaps—and with gates set open enough for all men.
1900. N. Brit. Daily Mail, 13 Feb., 4. Happy the man … who can exchange the dull prose of walking or of tramwaying for the poetry of motion … in … skating.
