The Leipzig-Dresden railway line through time

Saxony was the main mining area in the German states from the fourteenth century onwards. The mines of the Erzgebirge produced large quantities of silver and tin. Freiberg in Saxony was built exclusively as a mining town and prospered on the mining activities. By the sixteenth century the industry in the state was at its peak. Much of its economic success was because Saxony was the first mining areas in Europe to adopt the HUND, or four wheeled mining vehicle. The type of vehicle used in the Erzgebirge had an iron bar projecting from the bottom of the truck that guided the truck along two parallel planks or Gestänge. This mining truck was called a Leitnagel Hund. Great skill was needed by the miners to control the truck and terrible accidents frequently took place. Despite its lively handling it was very suitable for carrying large quantities of ore out of the mines to the surface for smelting.

One of the most important European works on mining in the sixteenth century was compiled by a doctor, Georg Agricola, who lived in Chemnitz from 1533. His drawings and writings show very clearly how efficient the mining was in Saxony, and the reliance on the Leitnagel Hund. Many churches in the Erzgebirge have original paintings and stained glass windows that show trucks being hauled or pushed by miners, as early as the 15th and 16th centuries. Miners from Saxony travelled as far as Mongolia to work in the mines during the eighteenth century and took with them their skills at handling the Leitnagel Hund.

The earliest rails, described as 'Karrenbahnen' in Germany, were made of wood, and it was not until the late eighteenth century that iron rails were first used. The first recorded use is in Germany, near Hanover by a mining engineer, Friedrichs zu Klausthal around 1775. About the same time at Coalbrookdale, in the English Midlands, iron rails were being laid to move trucks around the iron works at this key early industrial site. The first development had been to fit an iron cap to the wooden rail, which meant increased durability. Advances in technology meant that a rail could be fabricated entirely from iron and these started appearing late in the eighteenth century.

The available evidence, therefore, suggests that the first developments of railways may well have started in Germany and the principle then disseminated to Britain by travelling German workers. Saxons were using the Leitnagel Hund in Lake District copper mines during the seventeenth century. Mine railways did not change significantly for centuries, the hauling of the wagons was done either by horses or people. What did grow was size of the track system and the waggonway of the eighteenth century was found in every British mining area, particularly the north-east of England. By the end of the eighteenth century the English waggonway was being exported to the continent as the "English railway".

All these developments were reliant on horse power, however the vision of a new power source was becoming clearer. Steam power, and its progress from Newcomen to James Watt, meant that stationary engines were now available to power and run machinery. It was the nineteenth century that was going to see the power source moving onto rails. Richard Trevithick, a Cornish engineer succeeded in constructing a locomotive to run on a waggonway at Pen-y-Darran in South Wales in 1804. In 1813, an engineer, George Stephenson built an engine, Blucher, named after the Prussian general, to run on a waggonway at Killingworth Colliery in Northumberland. The travelling engine had arrived, the iron horse was ready to take to the rails!