3(10 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECrS JOURNAL, 



[OCTOBEB, 



fly-wlieel to secure a rotatory motion in the crank at the end of 

 t',ic-h strolve. If Mr. ISlackett did not liovvever work tliis cng-ine, 

 lie h:id anotlier of the same kind made and set iipon his tramway 

 at ^Vylam ; and in 1813 it worked hy tlie adhesion of its wheels on 

 the rails, thus upsetting the belief that the engine could not so 

 work. 



On the 30th December, 1H12, William and Edward Chapman 

 took out a patent for an engine, with additional wheels to work 

 upon a chain stretched along the middle of the railway the whole 

 length. This engine was tried on the Heaton tramway, near New- 

 castle, but given up. 



On the 22nd May, 1813, William Brunton, of Butterley, took out 

 a patent for a locomotive with legs. This was tried and worked. 

 In IKII, Mr. Blenkinsop had hit ujjon the plan of having a cog- 

 wheel and cog-rail to overcome the atfhesion. 



At this time, Mr. Blackett was fully at work experimenting on 

 the Wylam railway with an ill-made engine of Trevithick's, which 

 was found to be very troublesome, as the irregular action of the 

 single cylinder made' jerks in the machinery, so as to shake it in 

 pieces. Still, the whole of the coals were taken down the tramway 

 by this kind of engine.'- 



By this time George Stephenson was likewise at work; and Lord 

 Ravensworth and the Killingworth owners liad such trust in him, 

 that tliey gave him the money to make an engine in the opening 

 of 181 1, and on the 25th or 27th July, 18U,''-' it was tried on the 

 tramway. As Stephenson said Lord Ravensworth and his partners 

 were the first to intrust him with money to make a locomotive 

 engine, " We called it My Lord. I said to my friends, there is no 

 bound to the speed of such an engine, if the works can be made to 

 stand it."-" 



The engine had two cylinders, each eight inches diameter and 

 two feet stroke ; the boiler was cylindrical, eight feet long and 

 thirty-four inches diameter ; the tube twenty inches diameter, 

 passing through the boiler. The cylinders worked two pairs of 

 wheels by cranks placed at right angles, so that when the one was 

 in full operation, the other was at its dead points, — by which means 

 the propelling ])ower was always in action. The cranks were held 

 in this position by an endless chain, which passed round two cogged 

 wheels placed under the engine, and whicli were fixed on the same 

 axles on which tlie wheels were placed. The wheels in this case 

 were fixed on the axles and turned with them.'^ 



The trial was made on apiece of road laid with the edge-rail, ris- 

 ing about one in four hundred and forty, and was found to drag after 

 it, besides its own weight, eight laden wagons, weighing altogether 

 about thirty tons, at the rate of four miles; and after that time it 

 kept steadily at work. The application of the two cylinders made 

 the working of the engine regular, and secured the steady progres- 

 sive motion which was wanted in the \7ylam engine, there being 

 only the single cylinder and fly-wheel."' 



It was not till the next year that Stephenson took out a patent 

 for his locomotive, and here we find the bad workyig of the patent 

 laws as bearing upon our poor workmen. Had tt not been that 

 his first engine was not perfect, he could have had no patent, and 

 would have reaped no fruit from his days and nights of toil, as he 

 could not raise the money to pay the heavy fees which are drawn 

 from the patentee. Even for his first trial he wanted money, and 

 for which he was beholden to the kindly feeling of Lord Ravens- 

 worth : much happier than Oliver Evans, who fruitlessly sought in 

 America and England for the means wherewith to start his steam- 

 wagon. 



Here we may rest for a time, and think a little as to what led 

 Stephenson on in the world. No man could be worse off for money 

 or means : he had no powerful kinsmen, no wealth left him by a 

 father ; his earnings were barely enough for the wants of himself 

 and his son ; his standing was lowly ; he had no rich schoolfellows 

 or friends who had known him from childhood. A\^ithin twenty 

 years from this time he had, however, got together houses and land, 

 and at his death left behind him wealth which he never durst have 

 hoi)ed for. Brindley was not so happy in the end, neither was 

 Trevithick, nor Dodd. Watt began in a small shop — but he be- 

 longed to the middle classes, and had not the hard task of working 

 himself up from the lowest depths of life. If, however, he gathered 

 riches, he owed it to the fostering care of Boulton, witliout whom 

 he would have spent his income in undertakings wliich had not 

 within them the seeds of wealth, whatever else could be said for 

 them. He would have made the finest machinery for copying 



3 2 Wood on Railroads, 2od edition, p. 134. 



s:i Wood on liallrnnds, 2nd edition, pages 1.14 and l;i6, where ditTerent dates are ftiven. 

 In tlie report of StepheBson's speech at Newcastle in 1S44, iie Is made to say that the 

 dale was yl years liefoie, which would be in 1S12. Tins is u roistake. 



3 4 Speech at the Newcastle and DarliOk-tou Op«Ding. 



35 Lardner on the Steam-Eopine, p. ;'4ll.^ 



AQ Wood on Railroads, 2Dd edition, p. 1^6. 



statuary ; he would have tried to the utmost cures for illnesses of 

 the luuffs by breathing gases, — but he would have died worth not 

 one halfpenny. 



Fulton wandered through the Old World and the New, begging 

 kings and commonwealths to give him the means of building steam- 

 ships. We have seen that tlie utmost luck of Oliver Evans with 

 his steam-wagon was to get rights which were of no use to him, 

 and to turn the wheels of a ballast-engine. Dodd, after planning 

 two of the greatest bridges on the Thames, and spending thousands 

 in bringing steamboats into use, died unhappily. 



Trevithick, after trying one thing after another, and finding 

 friend after friend to help him, did, two years after Stephen- 

 son's beginning at Killingworth, leave England for the West 

 Indies; whence he did not come back, and that penniless, until 

 Stephenson had laid down the Stockton and Darlington Railway. 

 Trevithick was taken up by Mi. Blackett, a bold and daring man, 

 and sent a locomotive to Wylam, which, like most things in 

 which he had a band, was so wretchedly made that it was put to 

 other uses. Mr. Blackett made another, and Stephenson had it as 

 a model to shape something better. Trevithick began better than 

 Stephenson : he had friends in CornwaU and in London ; and he 

 ought not to have left to Stephenson to work out the locomotive 

 engine and the railway. Trevithick was always unhappy and 

 always unlucky ; always beginning something new,and never ending 

 what he had in hand. The world ever went wrong with him, as he 

 said, — but in truth, he .ilways went wrong with the world. The world 

 had done enough for him, had he known or had he chosen to make a 

 right use of any one thing. He found a partner for his high-pressure 

 engine, — he built alocomotive, — he had ordersforothersforMerthyr 

 Tydvil and for Wylam, — he set his ballast-engine to work, — and he 

 drove bis tunnel under the Thames for a thousand feet; — but no one 

 thing did well : all were afraid, and at length no one would have 

 anything to do with him. It was not that his mind was more 

 fruitful than that of Stephenson, who in this short time had made 

 improvements in )iit-work and railways, built a locomotive, and 

 found out the safety-lamp, and who throughout his life was ever 

 working out something new. What it was, was this — Stephenson 

 never lost a friend, and Trevithick never kept one. To the day of 

 his death, Stephenson had among his friends those who had given 

 him a helping hand in early life; and from year to year he went on 

 strengthening the bonds of friendship with them and their sons, 

 and the younger men vvho grew up around him. The Ravensworths, 

 the Peases, the Braiidreths, Matthew Bell, the Meynells, and 

 others of his earlier friends, will be found with him throughout, 

 standing hy him as directors in his great railway undertakings, as 

 they had befriended him in his small beginnings. This was a 

 great strength to him, and though poor he had a mine of wealth in 

 the purses of his friends. A manly and upright Englishman, open 

 in speech, steady, straight-forward, and hard-working, he earned 

 their friendship iind never lost their trust ; and if to others he was 

 known as a great engineer, to them he was better known as an 

 upright man. This made the poor working-man the rich manu- 

 facturer and great mine-owner. This gave him the means of doing 

 what Trevithick and Evans could only talk of. 



(To be continued.J 



WROUGHT-IRON BOWSTRING GIRDERS FOR BRIDGES. 



Some experiments have been lately made at the establishment of 

 Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., at Smethwick, near Birming- 

 ham, on a wrought-iron Bowstring Tubular Girder Bridge, of a 

 similar construction to the one tlesigned by Mr. Harrison, and 

 given in our .louniiil in January last. 



The experiments were made on a wrought-iron rib or girder, 

 120 feet clear sjian, in the presence of the Government Inspectors 

 of Railways, and (iovernment Board of Commissioners for impiiring 

 into the Strength of Iron. The girder is constructed entirely of 

 wrought-iron, and consistn of an arch of boiler-plates and angle- 

 iron tied across at the ends by horizontal bars ; and the tie-bars 

 are connected with the arch liy'vertical standards, and by a double 

 system of diagonals, wliich have the eflfect of distributing over the 

 whole curve of the arch the action of weights placed on, or pass- 



