C2 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



use near stations, and at all places Avhere the Avay is liable to 

 fi'i-eat deterioration. Tlie great Northern Railway has adnjited 

 them for use on all their inclines, wliile llie London and North- 

 western Company liave erected Avorks of their own capaldc of 

 supplying three hundred and lifty tons of steel per week, three 

 lumdriid of which is worked up into rails. The question is merely 

 one of first-cost and interest, and it is now pretty generally con- 

 ceded that steel rails at £l'> per ton, lasting forty years or longer, 

 are cheaper than iron at £7 10s., lasting eight years, especially 

 when it is considered that, on account of its superior strength and 

 stillness, a steel rail weighing seventy pounds to the yard is more 

 than e(iual to an iron rail weighing eighty pounds. 



At lirst it was urged that steel rails, when worn out, Avould be 

 useless from the impossibility of piling and re-rolling them, while 

 old iron rails could easily be re-worked in any desired manner. 

 All fears on this ground have, however, proved (juite unnecessary, 

 as numljcrless uses have been found for which the old steel i-ails, 

 as well as the crop ends formed in their manufacture, are desired, 

 so that these bring readily from £7 to £.S per ton. Among these 

 uses may be mentioned rolling int(j plates, to be used in making 

 k(>ttles, by stamping, instead of charcoal plat(! ; plates for nail- 

 cutting, telegraph wire manufacture, and hundreds of other pur- 

 })0ses for wiiich the metal is extnmicly vahialde. Or it may be 

 re-melted in the converter or otherwise, and be again produced as 

 rails. As stated in mj'' last letter, the 2:)roduction of steel rails in 

 England already amounts to one thousand tons per week. 



Tiu! Ibrm of rail in vogue on the Continent is the single headed, 

 but, like the English, live inches deep. Here, also, steel is taking 

 the place of iron on many lines, Mith a corresponding decrease in 

 the expenses for renewals. 



The " London Railway News " says : " Mr. Williams furnishes 

 some details whieii will serve to show the enormous wear and tear 

 to which the rails of our leading lines are subjected. On the section 

 between Hatfield and London, on the Great Northern line, 57,536 

 trains, carrying 17,700,926 tons, destroyed in three years the rails 

 laid down in 1857. Some heavier I'ails, laid in 1860, Avere worn 

 down in three years by 65,529 trains, and 13,484,061 tons. In the 

 case, hoAvever, of a section of raihvay betAveen Bury "and Accring- 

 ton, 62,399 trains, and a gross tonnage of 12,451,784, passed over 

 rails Avhieh lasted scA'en and a half years, or tAVO and a half times 

 as long as those of the Great Northern, Avith about an equal amount 

 of traffic. Again, at Bolton, it required 203,122 trains, and 38,- 

 803,128 tons, to Avear out the same description of rails in seven and 

 a quarter years. The cause of this rapid wearing out of the rails 

 of the Great Northern as compared with those of the other lines, 

 is due, apparently, to the greater speed of the trains. In the case 

 of iron rails, as in the delicately-constructed mechanism of animal 

 life, it is ' the pace that kills.' 



" Tavo steel rails of twenty-one feet in length were laid on the 

 2d of May, 1862, at the Clialk Farm Bridge, side by side Avith two 

 ordinary rails. After having out-lasted sixteen faces of the ordi- 

 nary rails, the steel ones were taken up and examined, and it Avas 



