Liverpool and Manchester Railway. 323 



bridges, and several cuttings and embankments of great extent. 

 The drainage of Chatt Moss, and the conveyance of the Railway 

 over that bleak and uncultivated tract of country, are also par- 

 ticularly worthy of notice ; but as accounts of these works have 

 already been made public, I shall not farther notice them. 



Excepting at Whiston and Sutton Inclined-planes, where the 

 inclination is at the rate of one foot perpendicular to ninety-six 

 horizontal, there is no part of the Liverpool and Manchester 

 Railway, more than one in 880 ; and the curves in no instance 

 deviate from the straight line more than four inches in the chain, 

 or QQ feet. The inclination of one in 880 is hardly felt by the 

 locomotive engines, and the curves are so gentle as to affect their 

 progress very little. But the inclines v^f one in 96 on the main 

 line, and several of the curves on the branch lines, prove formida- 

 ble impediments, by diminishing the speed of the engines, and 

 occasionally causing them to stop. The distance between the rails 

 forming the tracks is 4 feet 8^ inches, and the distance between 

 the two railroads or ways is the same. The rails, as shewn in 

 Plate IV. fig. 7, are of that form technically called Jish-hellied 

 edge rails ; they are made of malleable iron, in lengths of 15 

 feet, and weigh at the rate of 35 lb. to the yard. They measure 

 2 inches in breadth at the top, 2^ inches in depth at the chair, 

 and 3i inches in the middle. It is worthy of remark, that, when 

 these rails break, the fracture is generally a few inches from the 

 part resting in the chair, and never in the thick part of the rail, 

 between the points of support, which has led to the adoption of 

 the parallel rail shewn in Fig. 8, in all cases of repair. This 

 rail weighs at the rate of 40 lb. to the lineal yard. At every 

 three feet the rails rest in a cast-iron chair, which, including 

 keys and spikes, weighs about 16 lb. The chairs rest upon 

 stone blocks in the cuttings where the ground is solid, and 

 upon wooden sleepers on the embankments, as shewn in Plate 

 V. The resting blocks contain 4 cubic feet of stone ; two 

 iioles, 6 inches in depth and 1 h inches in diameter, ai'e drilled 

 in them, and into these, oak treenails are driven, to which the 

 chairs are spiked. The manner of fixing the chair will be best 

 understood by a reference to Plate IV. Fig. 1 is an elevation, 

 in which a is the chair, b the rail, and c the steel wedge or key 

 witli which it is fixed. The lateral motion of the rail is pre- 

 vented hv ti)is wedge, while the recess in the chair, and cor- 



