Depends how you define tracks. Iron rails that will last for any length of time require a fair degree of metallurgy so only about about 50 years or so before the first steam engine. Wooden rails and plates go back further and at some point someone will reference the Diolkos going back 2600 years. Wooden rails go back to at least the 16th century but were either used within mines or to move material short diances from them

Still yes there was a period where carts were being driven on rails by horses, gravity and at least experimentaly sails. As for what was being carried, mostly stuff from mines and quaries. If you look at british canals from about 1790 onwards you start to see a network of tramways being built to them. You also see the first canal inclined planes appearing. These were a specalist form of funicular railway that carried boats. The first sucessful one in britian (there were some built elsewhere but I've never been able to work out exactly what structure is being referred to) was on the ketley canal and served an ironworks the owner of which built the canal and the inclined plane. It apprently worked pretty well (being right next to an ironworks may have helped).

The boats that used the various inclined planes one the canal system would have to a large extent carried coal and stone although pig iron and manufactured goods were also carried. While some of these were powered purely by gravity (or in at least one case water power) static stream engines were used to drive some of them.

Swansea and Mumbles Railway claims to be the the first passenger railway with the first paying passengers in 1807. It was horse drawn (although they did later experiment with sails).

Catch Me Who Can ran in 1808 (the first steam locomotive that wasn't highly experimental)

Horse drawn trams became fairly common over the the next few decades and Crich Tramway Village has at least one its collection. Ipswich transport museum has one it is restoring that was in use (as a tram) until 1914.