RAILWAYS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 114, 12 March 1853, Page 10

RAILWAYS.

From a very amusing work, entitled " Our Iron Roads," we extract the following criticisms pronounced upon the celebrated George Stephenson by Mr. (now Baron) Alderson, who wr,s retained as Counsel against the Manchester and Liverpool Railway. The contrast of the views held then and now with respect to speed is very suggestive of what may yet be obtained.

" I say he never had a plan ; I believe he never had one; Ido not believe he is capable of making one. His is a mind perpetually fluctuating between opposite difficulties. He neither knows whether he is to make bridges over roads or rivers, or of one size or another; or to make embaukuients, or cuttings, or inclined planes ; or in what way the thing is to be carried into effect. In the first place, he answered me very shortly the first day—' I shall cut my moss at 45 degrees; it will stand at that very well.' Be it so—l am content with the answer. 'Of course (I said) you will drain your road on each side ?' * I shall make ditches.' < How wide are they to be?' 'Six feet.' 'Howdeep?' 'Oh,they are to be five feet deep, or four feet deep.' Now I am sure the Committee are well aware, that a ditch, if ever it is to come to a point at the bottom, and is to be five feet deep, cut to an angle of 45 degrees on each sidesmust be ten feet wide at the top. What do you think of the ignorance of this gentleman, who chooses to have an impossible ditch, -which he chooses to cut by the side of an' impossible railway ? Did you ever hear such ignorance as this ? Whatever credit you might have been disposed to give to Mr. Stephenson before, it is plainly shown now how utterly and totally devoid he is of common science; for every one who knows that two and two make four would hare known that it was an impossible ditch. But he does not stop there. When we come to inquire how Knowsley Moss is to.be got over, first he stated he was to have a channel for the brooks. I suggested to him that there were two brooks which run across the deep cutting of 89 feet, and I wanted to know how he was to get them from one side to the other. He.never had thought of them. He said, in the first instance, he would make a chaunel by the side of the railway. How was that channel to be made ? 'I do not know.' How long will it be? would it not be a mile? (which would of course increase the expense.) ' No,' says he, 'I think not a mile.' But, suspecting he might be wrong there,'then,'says he,' I will make a tunnel.' I cannot bind him, you see, to any one point. This is the gentleman who is called to prove the estimate and the plan. He cannot prove it. He makes schemes without seeing the difficulties; and when the difficulties are pointed out, then he starts other schemes, which are exposed to other objections. When we set out with the original prospectus—l am sorry I have not got the paper with me—we were to gallop, I know not at what rate; I believe it was at the rate of twelve miles an hour. My learned friend Mr. Adam contemplated,-possibly'in alluding to Ireland, that sonic of the" Irish Members would arrive in the waggons to a division. My learned friend says, that they would go at the rate of twelve! wiles an hour, with the aid of the Devil in the form of a locomotive, sitting as postillion upon ' the fore-horse, and an- honourable Member, whom I do not now see here, sitting behind him to stir up the fire, and to keep it up at full speed. But the speed at which those locomotive engines are to go has slackened ; Mr. Adam does not-go faster now than five miles per hour. The learned Sergeant (Spankie) says, he should like to have seven, but he would be content to go six. I will show he cannot go six; and probably, for any practical purposes, I may be able, to show that I can keep up with him by the "canal. Now the real evidence, to which alone you can pay attention, shows that practi-, cally, and for useful purposes, upon the average, and to keep up the rate of speed continually, they may go at something more thau four miles an hour. In one of the collieries, there is a small engine with wheels four feet in diameter; which, with moderate weights, has gone six • but I will not admit, because, in an experiment or two, they may have been driven at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour—because a small engine has been driven at the rate of six, that that is the average rate at which they can carry goods upon a railroad for the purposes of

commerce; for that is the point to which the Committee ought to direct their attention, and to which the evidence is to be applied. It is quite idle to suppose that an experiment made to ascertain the speed, when the power is worked up to the greatest extent, can afford a fair criterion of that which an engine will do in all states of the weather. In the first place, locomotive engines are liable to be operated upon by the weather. You are told that they are affected by rain, and an attempt is made to cover them; but the wind will affect them, and any gale of wind which would affect the traffic on the Mersey would render it impossible to set off a locomotive engine, either by poking of the fire, or keeping up the pressure of the steam till the boiler is ready to burst. I say so, for a scientific person happened to see a locomotive engine coming down an inclined plane, with a tolerable weight behind it, and he found that the strokes were reduced from fifty to twelve as soon as the wind acted upon it; so that every gale that would produce an interruption to the intercourse by the canals would prevent the progress of a locomotive engine."