One of the questions that has always intrigued historians is how ancient peoples traveled and transported heavy loads. Excavations by Greek archaeologists between 1956 and 1962 revealed that ancient engineers, two thousand years before the invention of the steam locomotive, devised a simple concept of a railway. This was the diolkos, an ancient track that stretched about seventy kilometers across the Corinthian isthmus in Greece. It is believed to have been commissioned by the Corinthian tyrant Periander in the early 6th century BC and remained in use until the 9th century AD.
This track consisted of stone blocks with two parallel grooves carved into them to guide the wheels of the transport vehicles. Small war and empty merchant ships were pulled on large wheeled platforms by the power of their own crews or groups of slaves. In 1961, remains of a mechanical device for lifting the ships onto the platforms were also discovered.
The purpose of this seemingly laborious transportation of ships was to The avoidance of much longer and more dangerous sea travel around the Peloponnese, which often ended in shipwrecks.
What remains today of the Diolkos are only fragmented sections, with the most preserved ones located on the northern side of the Corinthian Canal. Namely, the majority disappeared due to the construction of the Corinthian Canal, which was opened in 1893, and its route closely overlaps with the route of this ancient railway. The Diolkos, now a monument of exceptional value, holds an important place among the achievements of the ancient Greeks and is also significant for the history of technological development in general.