A road is a thoroughfare, route, or way on land between two places that has been paved or otherwise improved to allow travel by foot or some form of conveyance, including a horse, cart, bicycle, or motor vehicle.

Roads consist of one or two roadways (British English: carriageways), each with one or more lanes and any associated sidewalks (British English: pavement) and road verges.

Roads that are available for use by the public may be referred to as public roads or as highways.

A rail yard, railway yard or railroad yard is the US term for a complex series of railroad tracks for storing, sorting, or loading/unloading, railroad cars and/or locomotives. Railroad yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping rolling stock stored off the mainline, so that they do not obstruct the flow of traffic. Railroad cars are moved around by specially designed yard switchers, a type of locomotive. Cars in a railroad yard may be sorted by numerous categories, including railroad company, loaded or unloaded, destination, car type, or whether they need repairs. Railroad yards are normally built where there is a need to store cars while they are not being loaded or unloaded, or are waiting to be assembled into trains. Large yards may have a tower to control operations.[1]:46

Many railway yards are located at strategic points on a main line. Main line yards are often composed of an Up yard and a Down yard, linked to the associated railroad direction. There are different types of yards, and different parts within a yard, depending on how they are built.

Rescue comprises responsive operations that usually involve the saving of life, or prevention of injury during an incident or dangerous situation.

Tools used might include search and rescue dogs, mounted search and rescue horses, helicopters, the "jaws of life", and other hydraulic cutting and spreading tools used to extricate individuals from wrecked vehicles. Rescue operations are sometimes supported by special vehicles such as fire department's or EMS heavy rescue vehicle.

An airport is an aerodrome with facilities for flights to take off and land.[1][2] Airports often have facilities to store and maintain aircraft, and a control tower. An airport consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface such as a runway for a plane to take off[3] or a helipad,[4] and often includes adjacent utility buildings such as control towers, hangars [5] and terminals. Larger airports may have fixed base operator services, airport aprons, air traffic control centres, passenger facilities such as restaurants and lounges, and emergency services.

An airport with a helipad for rotorcraft but no runway is called a heliport. An airport for use by seaplanes and amphibious aircraft is called a seaplane base. Such a base typically includes a stretch of open water for takeoffs and landings, and seaplane docks for tying-up.

An international airport has additional facilities for customs and immigration.

In warfare, airports can become the focus of intense fighting, for example the Battle of Tripoli Airport or the Battle for Donetsk Airport, both taking place in 2014. An airport primarily for military use is called an airbase or air station.

Most of the world's airports are owned by local, regional, or national government bodies.

A quarry is a place from which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate has been excavated from the ground. A quarry is the same thing as an open-pit mine from which minerals are extracted. The only trivial difference between the two is that open-pit mines that produce building materials and dimension stone are commonly referred to as quarries.

The word quarry can also include the underground quarrying for stone, such as Bath stone.

A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes or an area of water that is devoted primarily to aquacultural processes in order to produce and manage such commodities as fibres, grains, livestock, dairy, or fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production.[1]

A farm may be owned and operated by a single individual, family, community, corporation or a company, may produce one or many types of produce, and can be a holding of any size from a fraction of a hectare[2] to several thousand hectares.[3]

Sawmills seem to have existed in the medieval period, as one was sketched by Villard de Honnecourt in c.1250.[2] On the other hand people think they were introduced to Madeira following its discovery in c.1420 and spread widely in Europe in the 16th century.[3]

The Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon (1550-1607) invented his type of sawmill by applying a pitman arm onto a wind mill, which converted a turning motion into an up-an-down motion. Corneliszoon patented the sawmill on December 15, 1593 and the pitman on December 6, 1597. He built the first sawmill there in 1594.

Before to the invention of the sawmill, boards were sawn by two men with a whipsaw, using saddleblocks to hold the log, and a pit for the pitman who worked below. Sawing was slow, and required strong and enduring men. The topsawer had to be the stronger of the two because the saw was pulled in turn by each man, and the lower had the advantage of gravity. The topsawyer also had to guide the saw so that the board was of even thickness. This was often done by following a chalkline.

Early sawmills simply adapted the whipsaw to mechanical power, generally driven by a water wheel to speed up the process. The circular motion of the wheel was changed to back-and-forth motion of the saw blade by a Connecting rod known as a pitman (thus introducing a term used in many mechanical applications). A pitman is similar to a crankshaft, but in reverse; a crankshaft converts back-and-forth motion to circular motion.

Generally, only the saw was powered, and the logs had to be loaded and moved by hand. An early improvement was the development of a movable carriage, also water powered, to steadily move the log through the saw blade.

A small mill such as this would be the center of many rural communities in wood-exporting regions such as the Baltic countries and Canada. The output of such mills would be quite low, perhaps only 500 boards per day. They would also generally only operate during the winter, the peak logging season.