54 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



ferry-boats in 260 minutes. Less fuel is consumed per mile in the magnificent 

 machines now employed on the New York Central Road than in the diminu- 

 tive traps used ten years ago to pull half the present loads ; and to compare 

 still more recent dates, the working expenses on the New York and Erie for 

 fuel, oil, and the like, have been steadily reduced within the last year some 

 three or four per cent, with each monthly report. 



This highly encouraging progress has been clue partly to the adoption of 

 absolutely new discoveries, but more to the better application of truths long 

 known and published, but badly applied. School science is always both 

 ahead and behind that of the workshop. While each has a mingled respect 

 and contempt for the other, the liberal minds who can acquire, reconcile, and 

 apply both are fewer than is generally believed. In practice improvements 

 are introduced by slow and careful degrees. 



Too high praise can not be awarded to Mr. D. C. McCallum, the superin- 

 tendent of the New York and Erie Railroad, for the energy with which he 

 has introduced on this great avenue of traffic a system of recording and pub- 

 lishing the results and methods of working its machines, which promises to 

 place the locomotive in some degree on a par with the pumping engines of 

 the Cornwall Collieries. James "Watt, with his partners, manufactured Cor- 

 nish pumping engines till 1800, and when his patent expired, one bushel of 

 coal was capable of lifting twenty millions of pounds one foot high, or its 

 equivalent in other work. From this time the "duty," as it is termed, or 

 amount of work done, actually declined, until 1810, when the mining pro- 

 prietors, alarmed at the fact, began to publish the duty of every engine, good, 

 bad, and indifferent. Hereupon improvement commenced, and hi 1834 the 

 Fowey Consols engine pumped twenty-four hours in presence of a committee, 

 raising one hundred and twenty-five millions of pounds one foot for each 

 bushel of coal burned ; and the average duty of all the largest engines is now 

 nearly one hundred millions an increase of four hundred per cent, in economy 

 without any marked discovery in either the generation or use of steam. 



These remarks have been called forth by a recent trial on a magnificent 

 scale of the actual effect of a powerful locomotive in hauling a heavy train 

 over the whole New York and Erie road, instead of changing engines and 

 men at certain stations as usual. The road is usually worked in four divisions, 

 and the chief design of the experimental train was to test the comparative 

 difficulty presented by each to a heavy train moving east. A large number 

 of cars were provided and loaded with lumber, and ample arrangements were 

 made for moving, by other trains, all the cars left by the trial engine at each 

 station. Every up grade was tried with big loads, which were gradually 

 diminished till the exact limit was reached at which the train could proceed, 

 in consequence of which much of the ground was many times traveled, and 

 the whole experiment consumed nine days' time. The width between the 

 rails on this road is 6 feet, that of a great majority of roads being only 4 feet 

 8 inches ; and many contend that the resistance to motion on curves is in- 

 creased with each increase of width, an opinion which, although apparently 

 well founded in theory, this experiment has done little to establish. Although 

 frequent experiments of tin's kind have been tried at various times on long 



