RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION. 297 



A medium-sized travelling-crane is a most useful appliance 

 about a railway station ; it has a much greater range of utility 

 than a fixed crane, but it is not always appreciated as it should 

 be. It merely requires a line of rails laid down parallel to the 

 rails of siding, and may be placed either on the same level as the 

 siding, or on the level of the loading-bank. Being laid flush 

 with the roadway, the rails do not present any obstacle to the 

 passage of carts or movement of merchandise. As one waggon 

 on the siding is loaded or unloaded, the crane can be moved 

 along its own line of rails, and be put to work at another with- 

 out the necessity of moving or drawing out any of the railway 

 waggons on the siding. Five, ten, or twenty, or more railway 

 waggons can be dealt with in this way, according to the length 

 of crane-line laid down. The crane can also be readily removed 

 to another part of the station-yard, or to another station along 

 the line. For stations with an intermittent or spasmodic traffic 

 in heavy timber, large blocks of stone, or other unwieldy 

 articles, a travelling-crane is particularly suitable, as it will 

 meet all the wants so far as the lifting is concerned, and when 

 the rush of traffic is over, it can be easily transferred to some 

 other sphere of usefulness. The crane-siding itself is never very 

 costly, as the rails are generally old rails taken out of the main 

 line, and laid on good second-hand sleepers. They have little to 

 do, and merely form a track for the moving crane. 



Fig. 451 is a sketch of an ordinary Goliath crane constructed 

 of timber. The general arrangement and capabilities of this 

 crane are somewhat similar to those of the gantry shown in Fig. 

 447. Both of them are designed to lift heavy weights, and move 

 them sideways into, or out of, ordinary road waggons, but the 

 methods of application are different. In the gantry the 

 verticals are permanently fixed, whereas in the Goliath the verti- 

 cals and overhead girders are all attached and braced together, 

 forming a complete framework which is carried by double 

 flanged rollers running on the lines of rails R, R. The winches 

 or gearing for lifting the weights, or slinging them sideways, or 

 for propelling the crane forward on the rails, are attached to the 

 verticals as shown, and are worked from the ground-level instead 

 of the overhead platform, as indicated in the gantry. As each 

 Goliath crane is complete in itself, there is nothing to prevent 

 two or three of them working at the same time on a long length 

 of crane-line. 



