13

E.~5

On some of the level lands east and west of the Mississippi River this train was run at a speed of 65 miles an hour. Arriving on the Central Pacific Railway, this train was run the whole length of that road, 881 miles, by one engine, No. 149, built in 1806 : cylinders, 16in. x 24in., driving-wheels, 60 inches diameter, running time, 21 hours 30 minutes —41 miles an hour. In this run the train had to pass over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the summit tunnel of which is 7,042 feet above the sea, the route up the side of the mountain being one continued series of sharp curves of OOOi'eet radius, and steep gradients of lin 45. There are on this railway 1,150 curves, total curvature being equal to 125 entire circles. The brake shoes on the train, on arriving at these mountains after a run of 3,000 miles, were so much worn that they had to attach two more cars to secure more brake-power; the engine, showing no signs of distress after this remarkable run, was at once returned to duty on the road. A large portion of the whole route from Piltsburg to San Francisco 13 a single-track railway. Thi3 train had to pas 3 over four mountain ranges, one summit being over 8,100 feet above lide. The running time was at a rate exceeding 43 miles an hour for the whole distance of 3,317 miles, and was completed without an accident of any kind. Now, what do these figures and this data present to the mind of the professional man? What can they present but the fact that such a railway performance stands unmatched and unrivalled by any othor railway performance that ever took place in the whole history of railways, and that there is no other place or series of railways in the world where such a thing was possible. It presents other features for reilection, particularly among that class of "croakers" who are continually crying out about the poor, light, rough, flexible American tracks and rolling-stock. It shows one of two things—either that the tracks, ears, engines, onicers, employes and management were of the very best possible in every part and department, or that the men who got up and conducted such a railway feat were a foolish, daring, and reckless set. Among the ignorant, American railway tracks are always put,down and described as light, poor, flexible, and rough , and this no doubt is the case in some of the sparsely-populated regions of the West where the business is light and the requirements small; but why writers, except with an intention to deceive, should place the tracks of the great trunk lines of America, and many other lines, in this category, it is difficult for a professional man to conceive. The rails are in most cases, the same weight and material as are used in Europe ; the ballasting is as good and, in some cases, better than any I ever saw in Europe. (The Pennsylvania railway is ballasted with broken stone throughout, even where they run through beds of" fine gravel.) The sleepers arc of the same kind of timber and of same dimensions, and more of them are used to a mile; the fastenings are good and reliable, and trains are run with as much security and reliability, and on many occasions with as great speed, as in Europe. Now, where does the poverty of this thing come in? It is a fact that "Jack Frost" does sometimes pitch and toss our tracks, and break things with a facility that is alarming ; but ho handles the English-built tracks of the Grand Trunk in Canada with still greater ferocity and want of tenderness; and I can bear witness to the fact that, in Russia, he treats with the same marked disrespect and unmannerly conduct the tracks of the Imperial Nicolai Railway, which he puts his adamantine grip on, sometimes just after severe rains have distorted it, and then it has to remain in that condition all winter, while carriages are run over it at forty miles an hour. Mr. Winans told me, in St. Petersburg, in 1866, that he could find no wheels that would stand the severity of that traffic in winter but the cast-chilled wheels, and that ho had wheels then on the road of Salisbury iron that had been running fifteen years. It may not be uninteresting to state that American railways have been so often and so persistently decried that many Americans who never carry any thinking or reflecting apparatus about with them, and who have been told in England that our tracks are so poor, join in the cry and belief that ail American railways are but flimsy affairs anyhow ; and this, too, after travelling thousands of miles without ever seeing or hearing of an accident. The great mass of people in this world are not willing to be troubled with thinking for themselves, but are ready to pin their faith on the preachings of some one else. Doctor Lardner, in his Hallway Economy, of 1850, page 400, says, " With an experience of twenty thousand miles of railway travelling in the United States, I have never encountered an accident of any kind, or heard of a fatal or injurious one. The form and structure of the carriages is a source of considerable economy in the working of the lines." Having given an Englishman's opinion of American railways, let us jump over the Atlantic and take an opinion or two on the other side. Some years since, being in. London, an English engine-builder, long in charge of one of the most noted works in the States, wrote to me from Edinburgh saying, "I came up here from London last night, and never had such a shaking up in my life." I had been that day down to Portsmouth, and returned so tired out from the shaking I had received that I could join my condolements with the man in Edinburgh. During much of the past two years I have been travelling over the length and breadth of Europe with two young ladies in my party, and found them often exclaiming, "Oh, I cannot stand this shaking; I cannot read a word. This car is bad ; this road is rough." Did it never occur to any one that a carriage which could not run steady, even on a good track, must be a source of injury to the permanent way and to itself, and that it was playing mischief with the power of the engine ? There lie 3 some of the rea3on why the English engine, on the best of tracks, cannot utilize as large a percentage of its power as is commonly done by American engines on the poor, light, miserable tracks of the States. Another point that deserves notice —among the common sayings in reference to the American railway system—is that American engines are flexible, like a basket, and are pretty good on our light, rough, poor trades, leaving the inference to be drawn that they are not suited to nor would they give good results on the heavy and perfect tracks of English railways. What can bs more preposterous —to think that an engine that can do its work well and safely on a rough track is not a reliable engine on a smooth and good track. Is a ship that can " walk the waters like a thing of life, And seem to bid the elements to strife," a poor and unreliable craft on a smooth sea ? The veriest tyro in mechanical arts can know, and must know, that an engine that can run with case and safety on a rough track must be a good engine, and a money-saving engine, on a smooth track. Having said so much about American engines, let xis see what Mr. Zerah Colburn, the engineer of considerable eminence, says about English engines in an editorial in "Engineering, 16th October, 1868, vol. vi., page 345. He writes as follows: " Locomotive Excises. —Although locomotive engineers are plain, practical bodies, they would no sooner listen to any proposal to give it new forms than would the genius of sculpture, or his chosen disciples, to transform the chef d'iz'uvre of the Belvidere Gallery into the traditional tiipodal aboriginal of ' Manx.1 The locomotive engine is ■ —as the locomotive engineers would, we are sure, say —a heaven-pacing 'Pegasus'—good-looking as, may be he is, nevertheless the greatest beast that paweth the valley, and his pawing is really more than the valley can withstand. In plain English, the locomotive of 1888 is a monster which all good engineers should unite to destroy. He is a stalking-horse of railway bankruptcy, the gaunt steed of railway ruin. It is time he was off to the ' Knackers,' and his carcass sold for what it will fetch in gun metal (precious little) and old iron. There are several counts of the indictment against this beast. But chiefly ho will perform his plunging, racing, backing, gibbing, and shying only on an iron railway, and of his sextupedal or oetupedal hoofs there is generally one pair on which from ten to fourteen tons of his carcass are supported. With these he will often 'let out' in a manner to grind fire from the rails. (No railway ought ever to be strained with a load of more than four tons to a wheel.) He has grown altogether too big, and ho must either have more legs put under him or else be knocked in the head. When the beast has eight, or ten, or twelve legs, as some of them have, in turning a sharp curve the o(F-wheels are playing mischief with everything on that side. The fact is, very long-bellied horses of the breed we are now dealing with will never ride well in the 'ring.' Dropping mataphor, eight, ten, or twelve-coupled engines, having, therefore, necessarily long wheel bases, tear the 'way'to pieces and themselves too. The system of engine building which requires a permanentway twice as strong as is necessary for the paying load, including wagons to be drawn, is, on its face, wholly wrong, and nothing but habit and an almost pagan veneration for the outward form of the locomotive as George Stephenson left it can account for the long continuance of a practice so palpably vicious," &c, &o. The proper counterbalancing of engines was a matter on which Mr. Oolburn, on Eeveral occasions, under took to preach a reform in the railways of England, but, as far as I know, with little success. The great importance of this matter had been clearly stated by George Stephenson many years ago. D. K. Clarke, in his great work on Locomotives, declares the importance