CIGARETTE PAPERS

Southland Times, Issue 21835, 12 October 1932, Page 8

CIGARETTE PAPERS

A GREAT ENGINEER. Robert Stephenson, who built the Rocket, the celebrated locomotive which won the prize of £5OO at Rainhill and established the efficiency of the locomotive for working the railway between Liverpool and Manchester, is rarely remembered as a man whose energy, skill and daring was shown in many great engineering works, notably the tubular bridges over the Straits of Menai and the estuary of the Conway as well as over the St. Lawrence at Montreal. Stephenson was responsible for the London-Birmingham railway and he has recorded that eleven of the eighteen contractors associated with the work were ruined by their contracts, largely as a result of rises in wages and the costs of materials. Stephenson in one session appeared before the House of Commons as the engineer of no fewer than thirty-three major schemes in Britain and he was also involved in works overseas. He put two bridges over the Nile, both tubular, but he varied his earlier designs by running the railways on the tubes instead of through them. His experience in Egypt gave him very decided opinions about the projected Suez Canal. Addressing the House of Commons he said: “I have surveyed the line. I have travelled the whole distance on foot and I declare there is no fall between the two seas. Honourable members talk about a canal. A canal is impossible—the thing would only be a ditch.” Stephenson, who died on October 12, 1859, did not live long enough to discover how much he had under-rated the importance of the canal, though he knew that from an engineering viewpoint his sneer had been unjustified. —CRITICUS.