Editing Horsecar (section)

== Summary ==
[[File:Horsetrain 1870.jpg|thumb|The [[Swansea and Mumbles Railway]] ran the world's first passenger tram service in 1807]]
The horse-drawn tram (horsecar) was an early form of [[public transport|public]] [[rail transport]], which developed out of [[wagonway|industrial haulage routes]] that had long been in existence, and from the [[Omnibus (Horse-drawn vehicle)|horse-drawn omnibus]] routes that first ran on public streets in the 1820s{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}, using the newly improved iron or steel rail or '[[Tramway (industrial)|tramway]]'. They were local versions of the [[stagecoach]] lines and picked up and dropped off passengers on a regular route, without the need to be pre-hired. Horsecars on tramlines were an improvement over the omnibus, because the low [[rolling resistance]] of metal wheels on [[iron]] or [[steel]] [[track (rail transport)|rails]] (usually [[Rail profile#Grooved rail|grooved]] [[Tram#History|from 1852 on]]) allowed the horses to haul a greater load for a given effort than the omnibus, and gave a smoother ride.

The horse-drawn streetcar combined the low cost, flexibility, and safety of animal power with the efficiency, smoothness, and all-weather capability of a rail track. Animal power at the time was seen as safer than steam power in that early locomotives frequently suffered from [[boiler explosion]]s. Rails were seen as all-weather because streets of the time might be poorly paved, or not paved at all, allowing wagon wheels to sink in mud during rain or snow.