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[Jake]

Wikipedia article

To summarise, they're a larger scale and longer distance version of minecart tracks. Typically, they were used for transporting quarried stone or coal and metal ores from the pithead to the nearest town, but they might also be used for logging. First known use of wooden rails of some sort comes from the 1560s but carved stone tracks are known to have existed as early as Roman times.

The way I'd implement them in DF is as a kind of road tile, but built quite rarely and late in worldgen. If you happened to have one on the map then you might see the wagons going past every so often, and if you built your trade depot directly adjacent to them you could get larger caravans from the settlements at each end. You could also build your own out to your hill-dwarves, when they're implemented.

And yes, this does leave some scope for fun modding possibilities when the mechanics wishlist and a few other things are in place.

[peskyninja]

The way I'd implement them in DF is as a kind of road tile, but built quite rarely and late in worldgen. If you happened to have one on the map then you might see the wagons going past every so often, and if you built your trade depot directly adjacent to them you could get larger caravans from the settlements at each end. You could also build your own out to your hill-dwarves, when they're implemented.

Why?

[Jake]

Because wagonways were only used on a really large scale in the 17th century and onwards, and the expense of laying one is only really justified when you need to move a hell of a lot of goods in one trip. Perhaps the trigger for building them should be city size and distance? At any rate, continent-spanning railway networks would be extremely cool, but they'd also mean the abandonment of the stated cut-off period for technological development.

Though it's starting to look like Toady One is ditching that anyway if we're going to have power-assisted minecart tracks, so who knows?

[Niyazov]

Canals made mores sense than wagonways for point-to-point transportation in almost all circumstances. My impression is that wagonways only made sense if you had a steep gradient, bad soil, or were moving extremely short distances.

[peskyninja]

Because wagonways were only used on a really large scale in the 17th century and onwards, and the expense of laying one is only really justified when you need to move a hell of a lot of goods in one trip. Perhaps the trigger for building them should be city size and distance? At any rate, continent-spanning railway networks would be extremely cool, but they'd also mean the abandonment of the stated cut-off period for technological development.

Though it's starting to look like Toady One is ditching that anyway if we're going to have power-assisted minecart tracks, so who knows?

There is technological advance in DF so there is no sense in making time limits.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The issue isn't time, it's population. If you live alone and don't drive friends places, are you going to buy a minivan? No, a VW Beetle or something is enough, and cheaper, too. Wagonways sound like something resource- and time-consuming, and only really useful withl large loads of goods. Volumes of goods that large require a large population. Large populations take time to build up. Hence, they'd likely only appear later in worldgen.

[Draco18s]

the 17th century and onwards

DF tends to be pre-1400s, just FYI.