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HISTORY OF RAILWAYS. 



THE many advantages attendant upon this expeditious mode of 

 travelling has been fully demonstrated ; fourteen years of continued 

 success (the Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened in the Autumn 

 of 1825), and its general adoption throughout Europe and America, 

 yield the most convincing proofs of its benefits to the civilized world. 

 Greatly as travelling had improved within the last thirty years, in all 

 parts of the United Kingdom; and, which, for speed and convenience 

 was unequalled in the world ; yet, the introduction of steam power, as a 

 means of water conveyance had been so successful, that it opened a 

 wide field for the application of it to land carriage, and of which, as was 

 to be expected, our many clever Engineers did not fail to avail them- 

 selves. 



Various were the machines and steam carriages which were invented, 

 tried, and partially succeeded; Mr. Goldsworthy Gurney, Mr. Hancock, 

 Colonel Masseroni, and many other ingenious men, had devoted their 

 great talents to the accomplishment of so desirable an object; but with- 

 out impugning, in the slightest degree, the merits of their several 

 inventions, or detracting from the great ingenuity displayed by those 

 gentlemen, it is sufficient here to say that they were all more or less 

 unsuccessful. 



The advantage of rail roads over the common roads, consists in the 

 great diminution of friction which they occasion, whereby any given 

 weight may be drawn through equal distances, at a much less expense 

 of power. Many experiments have been made in order to ascertain the 

 economy of power which they produce. The most moderate calculations 

 estimate the resistance on a level turnpike road, to be more than seven 

 times as great as that on a level railroad ; while, by some experiments, 

 it has been found, that the traction of the wheels on a level road, as to 

 that on a good railroad, is twenty to one ! It is thus evident that a smooth 

 wheel will roll along a smooth plane of iron, much easier than it will roll 

 along aplane covered with rougher loose stones; for, in thelattercase,ithas 

 either to be lifted over the inequalities, or it has to push them on one 

 side as it passes, or to crush them. But the crushingof the rough material, or 

 the pushing it aside, is so much waste of power; hence the great advantages 

 of a smooth surface. The late Mr. Telford, the eminent Engineer, made 



