Author: SPOORWEGEN-PREHISTORIE. (SOETENS, Cornelis)
Title: Asphalt-sporen door geheel Nederland, in verband met de eerste sluiting der geldleening ten behoeve van het asphalt-spoor tusschen Amsterdam en Haarlem.
Description: Amsterdam, P.M. van Cleef jr., [1847]. Cloth-backed ex-library binding. Upper and lower original cover bound in, with a picture of the asphalt track coach on the lower side. 48 p. 1st edition. 19th- and 20th-century library stamps (among others 'Governor of South Holland’). “Asphalt tracks throughout the Netherlands, in connection with the first closing of a loan on behalf of the asphalt track between Amsterdam and Haarlem.” A variant of the horse-drawn tram. Circumstantial, passionate plea for this alternative of the railways: "It is now loudly acknowledged by anyone unprejudiced, that Iron Tracks are not suitable for the Netherlands, and the regions where Iron Tracks are being placed, do not enjoy advantages, while existing highroads with their previously flourishing towns, villages and hamlets, are doomed to total decline hamlets by the system of monopoly and isolation." The author of this pamphlet, Cornelis Soetens, advocates a railway consisting of two asphalt tracks, five feet wide, ridden by a carriage pulled by horses, with three classes. This self-invented variation of the horsecar was planned between the "cradle of Laurens Koster” (Haarlem) and the Dam in Amsterdam. Unfortunately for Soetens and his financiers nothing came of it.

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