Treatise on Rail-Roads and Internal Communications - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1830 edition. Excerpt: ... and repairs at 12 per cent, per annum, which added to the interest, would make the yearly expense per ton, 9 dollars. chap. iv. Of Locomotive Engines. We shall first describe the different kinds of locomotive carriages that have been used, and then consider the objects which are desirable in relation to them, and the mode of their attainment. The first steam carriage for rail-roads was made by Mr. Trevithick in 1804, and tried on the Merthyr-Tydvill Rail-road in South Wales. We have not a particular description of this engine, except that it had an eight inch cylinder for the piston, and the piston had a 54 inch stroke. It drew after it as many carriages as contained ten tons of bar iron a distance of nine miles, at the rate of five miles an hour. The supposed want of sufficient adhesion of the wheels to the rails, prevented any considerable use of locomotive engines, till 1811--when Mr. Blenkinsop of Middleton Colliery, near Leeds, obtained a patent for the application of a rack or toothed rail, into which wheels turned by the engine worked, and thus moved the carriage. Plate 1, fig. 3, represents Mr. Blenkinsop's engine, and the rack-rail. The plate will explain the form of this engine. It has two cylinders A. B. the motion from each piston being communicated to the large cog wheel, through the rods c c. and d d. and the two small cog wheels with which they are connected. The cogs on the rail, consist of semi-circular protuberances, projecting horizontally 2 or 3 inches from the outer side of the rail. This kind of rail is used only on one side of the road, the other rail being of the usual kind. The boiler is cylindrical, heated by a circular tube passing through it. Engines of this kind were put in operation in 1811 or 1812, on the...