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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE, 



COMMON ROAD LOCOMOTIVE BILL, AND STREET RAILWAY BILL. 



Our common road locomotives demand of the Legislature 

 special statutory provision. They do bo in more respects than 

 one • for, in the first place, turnpikes, so long as they exist, have 

 a right to toll in amount according to the injury done to the 

 road ; and in the second place, the safety of the public re- 

 qiiires the necessary guarantee relative to speed, the con- 

 struction of enginer, tramways, and street-lines of railways, 

 and the training of carriage and other horses so as to familiar- 

 ize them with steam, and thus prevent shying and accident. 

 Statute thus requires to provide for circumstances of a three- 

 fold character. 



Under the former, we have to notice the different kinds of 

 locomotives or traction engines now on the road, and the 

 amount of tear and wear highways sustain from them. They 

 may be divided into four classes, viz. : Boydell's and the dif- 

 ferent kinds of endless railways with which wheels are fur- 

 nished; Bray's, and the different kinds of wheels with move- 

 able projections, teeth, or spikes on the periphery ; the various 

 kinds of fixed projections on the tire of the wheel ; and plain 

 tires of the ordinary kind, with or without clutches, together 

 with those adapted for tramways and street railways only. 



Such are the four classes of traction engines on which the 

 Legislature proposes to levy toll. It is not for us to say what 

 the amount of that toll should be, per ton or otherwise. 

 Doubtless that belongs to the committee-rooms of the Com 

 mons. It is, however, no less our privilege than cur duty to 

 notice the injury done to roads ; and in doing so, it does not 

 require a vast amount of logic to prove thit the tear and wear 

 upon the highways depends moi*e upon the manner the steam- 

 horse is shod than upon his actual weight or tonnage. In 

 other words, toll must be levied on steam-horaes somewhat 

 differently from what it is on our cattle. 



There is evidently here a wide field for engineering inquiry 

 in the upper committee-rooms of Parliament. To charge equal 

 toll for Boydell's and Bray's traction engines, weights being 

 equal, would be the highest of injustice both to the owners of 

 the locomotives and to the trustees of highways, or those who 

 have the charge of them. That toll should be paid on both 

 engines is manifest. Thus far the practical questiou is easily 

 solved ; but when we come to the amount of tear and wear 

 upon the road in each case, the equivalent of the toll, it is 

 otherwise, for then we also come upon differences wide 

 asunder, consequently requiring a correspondifig difference in 

 the amount of toll respectively levied upon each of the two 

 kinds of engines. 



In the investigation of this difference between Boydell's 

 and Bray'g wheel, that which chiefly demands attention is the 

 comparative merits of the endless railway of the former, and 

 the moveable projection through the tire of the latter at the 

 point where it rests upon the ground, as regards the tear 

 and wear the road sustains by their use in travelling and haul- 

 ing trains along its surface. In this investigation several 

 things have to be closely considered, such as the speed 

 at which the engine travels, the wetness or character of the 

 road, the dimensions of the endless rails of the one, and 

 breadth and diameter of the wheel with the length of the 

 teeth of the other, and the weight of the engine, &c. 



In principle the endless rail is intended to protect the road 

 from sustaining harm directly from the wheel, while the in^ 

 jury the rail itself does will depend mucb upon the adhgsive 



nature of the roads, and the manner it (the rail) is laid down. 

 If it is laid fiat down, and no indentation effected at the ends 

 as the wheel rolls off from the one on to the other, and if it 

 rises clean, lifting none of the road material behind, the road 

 will sustain very little injury. A certain amount of indenta- 

 tion at the ends of the rails where they meet is, however, ex- 

 perienced, while we have often seen large lumps of clayey 

 gravel adhere to the bottom, and rise behind with the rails. 

 Under such circumstances the legislative maxim may be to 

 make provision for the worst in the amount of toll. 



lu principle, again, there is very little difference between 

 Bray's wheel and some of our rotary digging machines for 

 cultivating land. The proposition of a projecting tooth or 

 wedge entering the road where the wheel rests upon it, to 

 make it bite, presupposes a certain amount of injury done 

 superadded to that which a plain wheel would effect ; and 

 although, from its cycloidal action, this tcoth may be said to 

 be momentarily at rest Vv-hen immediately under the wheel, yet 

 both before and after it is otherwise, its loosening and digging 

 action being in proportion to its length beyond the tire. 

 Moreover, this tooth or wedge projecting across the tire where 

 it rests upon the road, obviously makes the wheel sink deeper, 

 and thus do more harm, than it would do were it plain, as in 

 the fourth class ; while wet clayey gravel will be more liable to 

 adhere to it. The mechanical provision in Bray's and Ro- 

 maine'a wheels for withdrawing the teeth wholly or partially 

 cannot be received as any palliation to the above objection ; 

 for if totally withdrawn, the wheel then belongs to the fourth 

 class, cr is a plain wheel; and approximately so as the teeth 

 are partially withdrawn, the amount of damage done to the 

 road being in accordance with the depth the biting teeth pene- 

 trate its surface — thus displacing, loosening, and breaking up 

 the material of which it is made. In practice. Bray's wheel has 

 thus at one time a plain tire ajcting on the road, and at 

 another a toothed one ; and in this case, as in the last (Boy- 

 dell's) statute will doubtless havfi to charge toll directly as the 

 ♦maximum length of the teeth, but inversely as the diameter 

 of the wheel, before justice can be done to the different in- 

 terests involved. 



Fixed teeth on the tire of the wheel are more destructive to 

 roads than moveable ones, projecting lengths being equal, be- 

 cause they are continuously in action, digging up the road 

 metal, in going down hill as well as when going up, while they 

 are more liable to lift and loosen wet clayey gravel behind- 

 The fixed projections, however, now being made on the tire 

 hardly fall under the denomination of teeth, and must there- 

 fore be judged of according to the damage they respectively do 

 to the road. Upon the whole, or generally speaking, they may 

 probably be found to do less harm than the feet of horses. 



With regard to plain tires, the question of toll is a com- 

 parative one between the injury done by the feet of horses and 

 the wheels of the carts, waggons, carriages, &c., they haul, and 

 that done by the smooth wheels of a traction engine. The 

 feet of horses do an immense harm to roads, and for which 

 toll is justly charged. In this respect steam has many ad- 

 vantages over its rival, especially in the case of the endless rail- 

 way, and also in the case of the fixed tramways of stone and 

 metal now being made ; and, as we advance in the use of these 

 means, and in the march of progress generally, there cannot 

 be a doubt but fresh discoveries will continue to add to the ad- 



