railway
Pluralrailways
- 1A transport system that runs on rails and carries passengers or goods.
Victorian investors poured their savings into railway shares.
Her grandfather worked on the railway for forty years, latterly as a signalman.
Similarrailroad
Note
Speakers in Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth use this word for the whole rail system, while American English usually says railroad. It names the enterprise rather than only the track itself, so people work on the railway, buy railway shares or, in W. B. Maxwell's The Mirror and the Lamp (1918), hold forth on railway debentures.
- 2A track of parallel rails along which wheeled vehicles such as trains can travel.
A flock of sheep strayed onto the railway and brought the morning train to a halt.
Hundreds of miles of railway were laid across the country in a single decade.
Note
The physical line is something laid, opened and measured in miles: Andrew Martin's Underground Overground (2012) counts over a thousand miles of railways opened between 1837 and 1845, most of what would become the national network. As with the transport system, this is the British, Irish and Commonwealth word, and Philippine English uses it for the track as well.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from rail + way.