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Sieces OF FIRE Box 
Figure 15.—Tuis pRAwinG oF 1856-1857 InpIcaTeEs that Millholland had at last abandoned 
his impractical central-combustion-chamber boiler. Note the wide firebox shown in the 
end elevation. 
Galton’s Report on the Railways of the United States.?® 
Galton gathered his information in the fall of 1856 
for the British Parliament. It is assumed that he 
acquired the boiler drawing at the same time and that 
it was Millholland’s latest design. This would estab- 
lish the demise of the patent boiler at least as early 
as the fall of 1856, possibly in 1855. The engraving 
shows Millholland’s design for an anthracite-burning 
firebox and boiler. The general plan is similar to 
that of the Pawnees, but the central chamber is not 
shown. The design is plain and _ straightforward, 
showing a simple combustion chamber at the firebox 
end of the boiler. An end-elevation view shows the 
grate to be 66 inches in width (fig. 15). 
About 1858 Millholland introduced water grates, 
thus solving a chronic problem long associated with 
anthracite burners.”° Ordinary cast-iron grate bars 
burned out quickly because of anthracite’s intense 
heat and lack of insulating ash, although it was the 
practice to use coal of poor quality, one that would 
produce a large amount of ash to insulate the cast- 
iron grates from the direct heat of the fire. The 
water grate was a series of staggered iron tubes con- 
necting the front and rear water spaces of the firebox. 
Circulation of water through the tubes prevented the 
25 London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1857. 
26 An exact date for Millholland’s first use of the water grate 
cannot be determined. Engineer (February 8, 1861), vol. 11, 
p- 92, states that he used it for two or three years before he 
patented it April 16, 1861 (No. 32,076). 
(From Galton’s Report on the Railways of the United States, 1857). 
grate’s burning out. Although the idea was not 
original with Millholland, he introduced it in the 
United States and perfected its use. One advantage 
of the water grate, aside from its longer life, was that 
it permitted the use of better grades of anthracite. 
By 1859 Millholland, for all practical purposes, had 
converted the Philadelphia and Reading to coal 
burning; only four wood burners remained on the 
property. The Reading thus became the first major 
railroad in America to convert from wood to coal, 
and it did so despite the attendant difficulties in 
devising a method to burn anthracite—a far greater 
challenge than if the native fuel was bituminous. 
Few other large roads converted until the early 1870's. 
The Reading might have converted even faster had it 
not been for Millholland’s stubborn attachment to his 
patented boiler. But in all fairness, it must be agreed 
that his empirical rather than scientific methods 
solved the Reading’s fuel problems years before any 
other major railroad achieved similar results. 
Millholland paused to summarize his work in this 
field in a special memorandum published in the 
Philadelphia and Reading annual report of 1859 (see 
Appendix II). Previously his efforts had been alluded 
to sparsely in the road’s printed reports,” and the 
27 Direct reference to Millholland in the Minute Books is also 
sparse; the management dealt directly with Millholland’s 
superior, G. A. Nicolls, Superintendent of the Reading, and 
nearly all mechanical discussions mention only Nicolls. 
PAPER 69: JAMES MILLHOLLAND AND EARLY RAILROAD ENGINEERING 19 
