42 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



CAR-WHEELS. 



MR. HENRY SMITH has within a short time read before one of the 

 London Societies, at the request of its council, an account of the 

 principle of a new solid wrought-iron wheel of his invention. His 

 method may be briefly described as follows. In the first place, a 

 straight bar of hammered or rolled iron is taken, about 4 inches wide, 

 and long enough to form a hoop of such diameter as is most suitable 

 for the form of the intended wheel. Other pieces of bar iron, laid flat 

 and close together, and cut in lengths to the same circle as the hoop, 

 are then taken to form the base of a " pile." The hoop is next placed 

 upon this foundation, and filled with scrap iron, after which the whole 

 is put into a heating-furnace, and when at the proper heat is hammer- 

 ed to form a mould, the face of the hammer being so recessed as to 

 form an approximation to the shape of one side of the finished wheel, 

 but of a smaller diameter. Two of these moulds are then put together, 

 back to back, heated in a similar way, and hammered between tools 

 of the same form and size as the finished wheel ; but these tools em- 

 brace only a segment of about one fifth of the whole wheel, and the 

 mould must therefore be turned round during the process. The 

 wheel is then put into an annealing furnace, and planished between 

 tools like those mentioned above. After this, all that is necessary is 

 to bore out the centre. By this method any description of iron or steel 

 can be used for the tire of the wheel, insuring a clean wearing surface 

 and a compound character of fibrous and granulated iron, which it is 

 believed no other wheels afford. One of the wheels was exhibited, 

 and when struck had a remarkably clear, bell-like sound. The ham- 

 mer used was of 9 tons in weight, and the weight of the wheel is 4f 

 cwt. Some discussion followed as to whether it would not be better 

 to make the tire a disk, but no conclusion was come to, though all 

 agreed that, independent of the tire, the wheel was a most excellent one, 

 and many thought that the tire could not be changed advantageously. 



IMPROVED BUFFERS AND BREAKS. 



MR. JOHN LANE, of Liverpool, has just completed an ingenious ar- 

 rangement of breaks and buffers for railroad cars, some experiments 

 on which have proved highly satisfactory. The first operation was to 

 show the powerful and immediate effect of the new breaks, or stop- 

 pers, which, by a mere pull at a lever-handle, so effectually locked a 

 pair of wheels in each car, that from a high speed they came to an al- 

 most instantaneous pause. In the absence of diagrams, we can 'but 

 state that this break locks simultaneously the wheels of all the car- 

 riages that follow the first, by means of an ingenious continuation of 

 the arrangement of piston-rods, springs, and other machinery, all be- 

 ing simple in construction, and therefore not liable to get out of order. 

 The break itself, when in operation, clips around a drum in the middle 

 of the axlea-ee of the two wheels in each car to be stopped. The 

 whole is placed under the car-bodies, and the single operation of pull- 

 ing the break-handle in front effects the stoppage of every car in the 



