RAIL CREEP 



Rail Creep. Fault produced up- 

 on railway lines by constant traffic. 

 Under the rolling action of trains 

 there is a tendency for the track 

 rails to move or creep in the direc- 

 tion in which the heaviest traffic 

 passes, especially on descending 

 grades. Such movement, known as 

 rail creep, sets up stresses at the 

 rail joints when allowance is made 

 for expansion and contraction. 

 The movement is cumulative and 

 results in closing up the expansion 

 spaces between the rail-ends over a 

 considerable length of line, at the 

 same time displacing the sleepers. 

 If not corrected periodically it ulti- 

 mately brings about warping of the 

 rails and a kink in the track. 



Railing. Fence made of posts 

 and rails. Such are erected around 

 enclosures of various kinds, e.g. a 

 cricket ground, where it is neither 

 possible nor desirable to erect 

 walls. A railing may be of wood, 

 iron, or other metal, and is usually 

 formed of bars laid horizontally 

 and supported by posts. 



Railway and Canal Commis- 

 sion. British judicial body. It was 

 first appointed in 1873 and reor- 

 ganized in 1888. and decides ques- 

 tions at issue between the rly. com- 

 panies and traders and the public 

 generally. It consists of two regu- 

 lar commissioners, who are assisted 

 by three judges, one each from 

 England, Scotland, and Ireland. 

 The British rlys. are controlled by 

 the Government to a much greater 

 extent than are other commercial 

 undertakings, and the commission 

 exists to enforce this control with 

 regard to rates, fares, etc. Since 

 1893 the commission has possessed 

 powers, under certain conditions, 

 to reduce the hours worked by rly. 

 servants. There is also a commis- 

 sion, similarly constituted, for pro- 

 moting the construction of light 

 railways in England and Wales. 



Railway Clearing House. In- 

 stitution in London for dealing with 

 the through traffic on the railways 

 of Great Britain. There the finan- 

 cial relations of the various com- 

 panies are adjusted. It was 

 established in 1842, and is at Sey- 

 mour Street, Euston Square, N.W. 

 Its affairs are managed by a com- 

 mittee consisting of one representa- 

 tive from each of the rly. com- 

 panies. The departments are the 

 secretarial, merchandise, mileage 

 and demurrage, and coaching. 

 There is a clearing house for the 

 Irish railways in Dublin (5, Kil- 

 dare Street), and other countries 

 have similar institutions. 



Rail way men, NATIONAL UNION 

 OF. British trade union. It was 

 formed in 1913 by the amalgama- 

 tion of the Amalgamated Society of 

 Railway Servants, founded in 



6468 



1872 ; the General Railway Work- 

 ers' Union, of 1889 ; and the 

 United Pointsmen and Signalmen. 

 Its defined object was " to secure 

 the complete organization of all 

 workers employed on or in con- 

 nexion with any rly. in the United 

 Kingdom." With the Miners Fed- 

 eration and the Transport Workers 



RAILWAYS 



it formed the so-called Triple Alli- 

 ance of the British labour move- 

 ment. It called a general strike 

 beginning Sept. 26, 1919, which 

 lasted for nine days, one of the main 

 issues being the standardisation of 

 rly. wage scales. Its headquarters 

 are at Unity House, Euston Road, 

 London, N.W. See Trade Unions. 



RAILWAYS: STEAM, ELECTRIC, ETC. 



A. Williams, Editor, Engineering 'Wonders of the World 

 This article deals with the various kinds of railways, and the pro- 

 gress made in developing this form of transport. In connexion with 

 the subject, see Brake . Engineering ; Locomotive ; Points; 

 Signalling ; Sleeper ; Steam Engine ; Steel. See also Canal ; 

 Rocket; Transport; biographies of Stephenson and other engineers, 

 and entries on the various railway companies, e.g. Midland 



The germ of the modern rly. is to 

 be found in the tracks formed of 

 wooden planks and rails which 

 were laid down in the Newcastle 

 district, as noticed by Lord Keeper 

 North in 1676, with the object of 

 facilitating the haulage by animal 

 power of wagons or trams of coal. 

 To reduce the wear on these wood- 

 en rails by laying sheets of iron on 

 them was an obvious expedient, 

 and the further improvement of 

 making them entirely of iron dates 

 from the latter part of the 18th 

 century, when also they were cast 

 L-shape, the upright portion, 2 or 

 3 ins. high, being added on one 

 side of each to prevent the wheels 

 from running off the track. 



Such rails, known as plate rails, 

 were obviously an inconvenience 

 to the traffic on an ordinary road 

 which the railway had to cross, and 

 it was for that reason that in 1789 

 William Jessop, of the Butterley 

 Ironworks, conceived the idea of 

 fixing the projecting portion not on 

 the rail but on the wheel, and mak- 

 ing it run in a groove formed in the 

 plates. This was actually the 

 method adopted in laying the 

 Loughborough and Nanpantan rly. 

 across a main road, but on other 

 parts of the line, instead of a 

 groove being formed for the pro- 

 jecting part or flange, edge rails 

 were used. These may be regarded 

 as plate rails in which the wheels 

 were made to run on the top of the 

 upright portion of the L, instead of 

 on the flat horizontal part, the 

 wheel flange projecting down the 

 side. These edge rails gradually 

 developed into the modern type of 

 rail now universally employed, 

 though the term plate-layer still 

 used of the men who look after the 

 permanent way of a railway is a 

 reminiscence of the old plate rail. 



The early tramways or rlys. 

 were intended for the private use of 

 their owners, and the first public 

 line was the Surrey Iron Rly., a 

 plate-way about 9 m. long from 

 Wandsworth to Croydon, which 

 was authorised by Parliament in 



1801. Here animal traction was 

 employed, and the first application 

 of steam traction is credited to 

 Richard Trevithick on a plate-way 

 in South Wales in 1804. The Stock- 

 ton and Darlington Rly., opened in 

 1825 and now merged in the N.E. 

 system, is the oldest passenger rly.; 

 it was laid with edge rails, and the 

 original intention was to use ani- 

 mal power, but at the instance of 

 George Stephenson the steam loco- 

 motive was adopted instead. It 

 was, however, the Liverpool and 

 Manchester Rly., opened in 1830, 

 which finally established the su- 

 premacy of the steam locomotive. 



The years in which various coun- 

 tries first opened steam rlys. are : 

 Austria and France, 1828 ; United 

 States, 1829; Belgium and Ger- 

 many, 1835 ; Russia, 1838 ; Italy, 

 1839; Switzerland, 1844; Spain, 

 1848 ; Canada and Mexico, 1850 ; 

 Sweden, 1851 ; Norway and India, 

 1853 ; Portugal, Brazil, and Aus- 

 tralia, 1854 ; Egypt, 1856 ; South 

 Africa and Turkey, 1860 ; Japan, 

 1872 ; and China, 1887. 



According to recent statistics 

 there are nearly 700,000 m. of rly. 

 in the world, rather more than half 

 the total being claimed by the New 

 World. The mileage of state- 

 owned rlys. is less than half that of 

 company-owned. In Great Britain 

 and Ireland, at the end of 1913, the 

 route mileage was 23,691, and the 

 single-track mileage, including sid- 

 ings, 55,405, according to the 

 board of trade rly. returns. The 

 net paid-up capital of the com- 

 panies, after deduction of duplica- 

 tions and of nominal additions due 

 to conversion, consolidation, and 

 division of stock, amounted to 

 1,124,289,000. The number of 

 passengers " originating on the sys- 

 tems of the different companies " 

 was 1,591,146,000, including an es- 

 timate of the journeys made by 

 season ticket holders, and the 

 weight of goods and minerals 

 372,037,000 tons, with 23,544,000 

 live stock. The gross receipts from 

 all sources were 139,451,000, and 



