Horse drawn railways were used before the advent of steam locomotive traction, which gradually superseded them in most instances.

Examples

Examples include (please list in date order until replaced by steam):
Tasman Peninsular Tramway (~1800- ) convict (human) powered
Swansea and Mumbles Railway (1804-1877)
Leiper Railroad

Leiper Railroad

The Leiper Railroad was a horse drawn railroad that operated between 1810 and 1828 in what is now Nether Providence Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It was replaced by the Leiper Canal, remnants of which are still visible...

 (1810-1828)
Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway

Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway

The Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway was a gauge horse-worked railway line in Devon, England. Most of the network had been replaced by conventional railways by 1888. The last surviving section, which continued to operate until 1960, is generally referred to as the Lee Moor Tramway...

 (1823-1888) gauge
Stockton and Darlington Railway

Stockton and Darlington Railway

The Stockton and Darlington Railway , which opened in 1825, was the world's first publicly subscribed passenger railway. It was 26 miles long, and was built in north-eastern England between Witton Park and Stockton-on-Tees via Darlington, and connected to several collieries near Shildon...

 operated with both horses and engines for a while. (1825-1833)
Czech rail records

Czech rail records

Czech rail records, dates in brackets indicate when the record was reached or when the railway infrastructure was put into operation.First horse-drawn railway...

 (1828-) gauge
Festiniog Railway (1836-1863)
Patent (1838-1844) G. Peppercorne
Goolwa Port Elliot Railway (1854-); used up to 16 horses gauge
Newquay Railway (1855-) clay mining
Nelson

Nelson

- People :* Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, English admiral* Nelson , for other people with the surname "Nelson"* Nelson , for people with the given name "Nelson"...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 (1861-____)
Wallaroo

Wallaroo, South Australia

Wallaroo is a port town on the western side of Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, 160 kilometres north-northwest of Adelaide. It is one of the three Copper Triangle towns famed for their historic shared copper mining industry, and known together as "Little Cornwall", the other two being Kadina ...

 (port) to Moonta tramway (1862-1884+)
Port Wakefield Railway (1870-1876) gauge.
Port Broughton

Port Broughton, South Australia

Port Broughton is a small South Australian town located on the Yorke Peninsula on the east coast of Spencer Gulf. It is situated about 170 km north west of Adelaide, and 56 km south of Port Pirie At the 2006 census, Port Broughton had a population of 908....

 (1876-1926) always isolated;
Horse Tramways in Fiji (1884-) gauge and gauge. Some assisted by manpower. Cane tramways.

----
Kingston

Kingston, South Australia

There are two towns named Kingston in South Australia:* Kingston SE, South Australia on the mainland to the southeast of the capital.* Kingston-On-Murray, South Australia in the Riverland...

 (port) Naracoorte 
Gawler 
Moonta 

Proposed

The Governor of New South Wales and the Railways Engineer John Whitton

John Whitton

John Whitton was appointed Engineer-in-Charge for the New South Wales Railways, Australia, in January 1867. Over the next 32 years he completed 2811 miles of railway around NSW and Victoria...

 fought a long battle in the 1860s over the introduction of horse drawn railways and the narrow gauge, at least for lightly-used branch lines; neither were never introduced.

Horse shunting

Horses continued to be used for light shunting well into the 20th century.

Horses have several advantages for this purpose:

• cheap
• could easily move from track to track
• no warm up time like a steam locomotive
• they can learn to obey instructions

Disadvantages of horses include:

• they may be spooked and bolt.
• they may trip and fall and get injured or killed.

See also

• Horse railway
• Rail gauge
  Rail gauge
  Track gauge or rail gauge is the distance between the inner sides of the heads of the two load bearing rails that make up a single railway line. Sixty percent of the world's railways use a standard gauge of . Wider gauges are called broad gauge; smaller gauges, narrow gauge. Break-of-gauge refers...
  
  
• Rail transport in South Australia
  Rail transport in South Australia
  The first railway in colonial South Australia was a horse-drawn tramway from the port of Goolwa on the Murray River to an ocean harbour at Port Elliot in 1854...
  
  
• Corduroy road
  Corduroy road
  A corduroy road or log road is a type of road made by placing sand-covered logs perpendicular to the direction of the road over a low or swampy area....