Viability of pre-industrial railroads

BTW the horses don't break their legs because the sleepers are more like two parallel lines of toadstools (they are still there).
These are what the first steam railway (early 1830s) around here used. It was two parallel lines of stone blocks with the rails on top. Didn't work well with the heavier trains that steam could pull. The weight spread the rails apart, which is why ties were introduced, to "tie" the rails together.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_tie#Stone_Block said:
Stone Block
The type of sleeper used on the predecessors of the first true railway (Liverpool and Manchester Railway) consisted of a pair of stone blocks laid into the ground, with the chairs holding the rails fixed to those blocks. One advantage of this method of construction was to allow horses to tread a middle path without the risk of tripping. In railway use with ever heavier locomotives, it was found that it was hard to maintain the correct gauge. The stone blocks were in any case unsuitable on soft ground, where something like timber sleepers had be used. Two centuries later, stone sleepers would reappear in the form of slab track.
 
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