These primitive rails were superseded in 1767, when ironmaster Richard Reynolds probably for the first time replaced wooden rails with cast iron rails Chapter 5 of Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers, by Samuel Smiles, at Project Gutenberg and in 1793 when the then superintendent of the Cromford Canal, Benjamin Outram, constructed a tramway with 'L'-shaped flanged cast-iron plate rails from the quarry at Crich: it was a little over a mile in length descending some 300 feet and had a gauge of 3ft6in.