196 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[June, 



the smoke nuisancB, in the year 1819, a multitude of schemes are 

 mentioned as having been found to answer extremely well, and some 

 are said to have been then in successful operation in the large London 

 breweries. Yet these same schemes have all been discontinued — a 

 result hardly compatible with the supposition that their continued use 

 had been found advantageous. Upon what principle we can form any 

 other anticipation relative to this smoke-burning project, than th.it it, 

 too, will be discontinued, so soon as the stimulus of novelty has sub- 

 sided, we are altogether at a loss to imagine. Besides, if our corres- 

 pondent be prepared to assert that this scheme has been beneficial in 

 some cases, and we at once admit, under the qualifications we have 

 stated, that sucli may be the case, is he prepared to deny that, in 

 other instances, it has been detrimental ? Has it not been discontinued 

 already in several factories in Liverpool and Manchester, and was not 

 its employment in the case of Messrs. Hamnett & Co.'s furnace, pro- 

 ductive of serious injury to the boiler, from the alternations of tem- 

 perature consequent upon the alternate streams of flame and cold air 

 flowing from the diffusion orifices and impinging upon the iron of the 

 boiler? It would be unfair, we admit, to condemn any scheme, be- 

 cause it may have failed once, or even several times ; for the failure 

 of a good plan may be induced by imperfect machinery, carelessness, 

 or even design. But neither can the reputation of a few successful 

 applications win our entire confidence, especially when the plan is 

 unaccompanied by any manifestation of qualities adequate to the pro- 

 duction of the alleged advantages. It is so manifestly the interest of 

 patentees to exaggerate the merits of their own projects ; and even 

 where emolument is not an object, an ephemeral reputation is some- 

 times so highly valued, and the tendency of human nature to regard 

 its own productions with partiality is so powerful and universal, that 

 all representations coming from an interested party are to be received 

 with caution. If this be the rule with rational projects, shall we dis- 

 pense with its observance in the case of projects whose rationality 

 is more than problematical ? Shall we, upon the questionable autho- 

 rity of a patentee, accept statements as indisputable which not only 

 transcend the bounds of credibility, but are inconsistent with the dic- 

 tates of common sense ? 



To the charge which might be thought to be involved in our ac- 

 count of the extraordinary circumstances under which this gentleman's 

 ideas relative to the superiority of the smoke-preventive principle, 

 appear to have been developed, no defence or explanation is even 

 attempted to be offered. We are told, indeed, that if smoke pre- 

 vention be good under the auspices of Mr. Bourne, it cannot be bad 

 under those of Mr. Williams, a proposition sufficiently self-evident, 

 but altogether foreign to the question. The point to be determined 

 is not whether Mr. Bourne's plan is good or bad — an inquiry with 

 which we have nothing to do ; but whether Mr. Williams did or did 

 not obtain the ideas of Mr. Bourne in confidence, and appropriate them 

 to his own uses. Upon this point Mr. Williams is silent. He does 

 not say that Mr. Bourne's essay was not published anterior to his 

 book, that Mr. Bourne's patent is not of an earlier date than his pa- 

 tent, and that antecedently to the dates of books or patents, Mr. Bourne 

 did not communicate to him, in confidence, his ideas, upon the expe- 

 diency, practicability, and advantage of the smoke preventive s^-stem. 

 It is true that this system is not carried out in Mr. Williams' scheme, 

 the proposed object being defeated by the injudicious character of the 

 arrangements, and that therefore this furnace has no title to the charac- 

 ter of a smoke-preventing one. But the desire that it should be such 

 is palpable enough, and the existence of this desire and the boasted 

 possession of smoke-preventive properties, are quite as conclusive, so 

 far as this question is concerned, as if that desire and those properties 

 lad been actually realized. Whatever credit, then, is claimed upon 

 this score of smoke prevention, or whatever credit is claimed for the 

 announcement of the superiority and practicability of that system, is 

 not merely unclaimable by this gentleman, but it is questionable 

 whether he can extricate himself from all suspicion of having appro- 

 priated as his own what he must have known to be the property of 

 another. It is true that the thing taken, supposing that the fact of 

 such appropriation were established, is of little or no value; for the 

 fact of the abstraction from one person of a smoke-preventing project 

 and its appropriation or attempted appropriation by another, can 

 hardly be supposed to be productive of much benefit to the one, or of 

 much detriment to the other. But the insignificance of the value can- 

 not influence our sentiments respecting the quality of the act, unless 

 it be to suggest that if an insignificant object be capable of inducing a 

 deviation from strict propriety, a more important inducement may be 

 expected to render such deviations more extensive and less reluctant. 

 As regards this case, we refrain from making any specific charge fur- 

 ther than to say that Mr. Williams has not even noticed the state- 

 ments we formerly made upon this branch of the subject, that those 

 statements must therefore be supposed to be correct, and we are pre- 



pared to substantiate them by the fullest evidence, and that of the 

 conclusions involved in those statements we must leave every reader 

 to make his own estimate. We therefore dismiss the subject with 

 the general rema»k, that the public is, we believe, perfectly capable 

 of appreciating the merits of a projector who is indebted to his in- 

 vention for his facts and to his memory for his inventions. 



MR. VIGNOLES' LECTURES ON CIVIL ENGINEERING, AT THE 

 LONDON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. 



SECOND COURSE. — LECTURE IV. LAYING OUT RAILWAYS. 



In the preceding lectures the subject of the motive power had been much 

 enlarged upon, from its necessarily influencing the manner of laying out a 

 line. Mr. Vignoles said the student may be referred to study, at greater 

 leisure and in detail, the principles laid down in the works of various authors 

 on laying out both roads and railroads — MNeill, Parnell, Navier. Tredgold, 

 &c.— and the rules laid down by them may be taken as sound first principles, 

 though modified at present by the improvement of motive power and other 

 causes which could not have been known n priori. Railroads have so com- 

 pletely .superseded many of the principal roads, and the public convenience 

 has been thereby so much interfered with, that it becomes a matter of im- 

 portance to run the trains as often as possible, and this becomes a new ele- 

 ment in laying out a line of railway. Hitherto this has been done under the 

 impression that the engines would always carry maximum loads, and though 

 it is true that main lines radiating from the metropolis, into which a number 

 of tributaries fall, may be laid out with a view to maximum loads, yet it 

 becomes a consideration whether it would not be better in general to lay out 

 railways with a view to the trains going often, and with light loads, and 

 thereby to make the gradients suitable to the ground over which they pass. 

 On this subject Mr, Tredgold has always judged soundly. Seventeen or 

 eighteen years since he made various calculations on the comparative expense 

 of ascending and descending inclined planes, and of cutting them down to a 

 level ; and he states, in his Treatise on Railroads, that it will be much less 

 expensive to follow nearly the undulations of the surface, and " if a few 

 examples (of the comparative expense) be added, it will assist in removing 

 those extravagant notions of cutting and embankments, by which the capital 

 of the country is wasted in unprofitable speculations." But the practice of 

 engineers has been directly opposed to this, although we had almost a daily 

 improvement in locomotive power, afiording means of overcoming the difB- 

 culties of steep gradients. Before determining upon the inclinations which 

 he will adopt, therefore, the engineer should make estimates of the compara- 

 tive expense of forming and working flat gradients, and gradients of an 

 inferior description, and it will be found that gradients of 50, 60, and even 

 SO feet in a mile, may be advantageously introduced, especially where the 

 traffic is not very considerable. And if lines were laid out upon these prin- 

 ciples, instead of the traveller being overcharged with the expense of the 

 capital sunk, as at present, he would be charged with the expense of the 

 motive power, which bears a very small proportion to the total amount 

 exacted from passengers. Locomotive power only is scarcely more than Jrf. 

 per passenger per mile, whereas the ordinary charge to passengers is2d.; and 

 this may explain why railway companies do not lease the working of their 

 lines, for they make most of their profit as carriers, and not as capitalists. 



In laying out railways there are generally two distinctive descriptions of 

 country which the engineer meets with, each of which requires a different 

 description of treatment with respect to his operations, 'flie first is where 

 there is a certain summit or ridge of country to be surmounted ; the rule in 

 this case will apply both to roads and railroads — viz., to get a uniform incli- 

 nation, if possible, up to the summit; but if that be not practicable, to lay 

 out the line in stages, taking care that, having once attained any inter- 

 mediate elevation, the line does not, if possible, descend again. In a country 

 of this description there will be much more difficulty in the details than in 

 striking out the first general idea, for it will require the greatest care and 

 patience to lay out the line so as to ascend to the summit at the least pos- 

 sible expense, by winding along the sides of hills, and crossing lateral valleys 

 and ravines to the greatest advantage, Sec. 



The other description of country is where the extreme points of the line to 

 be laid are on a level, or nearly so, and the ground varies, in this case his 

 judgment will be principally e.^ercised in determining the general direction 

 of the road, in taking trial levels to determine the line of least cutting and 

 embankment, in avoiding valuable property, and in securing the largest 

 amount of traffic ; and in a country like England, which is so full of improve- 

 ments, gentlemen's seats, roads, streams, 8tc., it is an exceedingly compli- 

 cated duty to make choice of the best line under such circumstances ; but it 

 may be laid down as a general rule, that in any difficulty it is always better 



