614 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



to the utmost, when its work is light. For the engine to make 

 steam at one end while it wastes it at the other is idling, and we 

 may say that Corliss' engines prove that the efi'ect of expansion 

 may be carried much farther than any engines with common valve 

 motions carry it. 



The effect of the improvements made since the opening of the 

 Liverpool railway has been to reduce the consumption of fuel 

 from forty-nine to fifteen pounds per mile, chiefly by increasing 

 the lap and travel of the valve, and the subsequent introduction 

 of variable expansion gear and improved proportions, have re- 

 duced the consumption so much farther that the best engines have 

 worked at twenty miles per hour with one pound per ton per 

 mile, against eight pounds at twelve miles per hour, consumed 

 by the best engines in 1833. Should all this improvement dis- 

 courage or encourage US'? The known powers of steam, and the 

 actual performances of the best stationary engines, show that 

 there is room for more improvement, and the directors of railways 

 having failed to make the dividends they promised, are now 

 modestly asking the engineers to reduce the consumption and 

 cost of fuel; to burn coal, to heat feed water, dry steam — to do 

 what they like. . The time has been when the financial men took 

 but little advice from the designers of engines, and gave them 

 much advice, in such wise that they dare not refuse it; but their 

 conceit is staggered by the steady diminution of the trafQ.c re- 

 ceipts, consequent on the increase of competing lines, and the 

 prospect that railways, like highways, will cease to be profitable, 

 and finally become a tax upon the land they improve. The en- 

 gineers of England and this country are now really encouraged 

 to make improvements, to save fuel, to save wear of the track, 

 repairs, &c., and the key to all this is that economical distribu- 

 tion of steam which will relieve the blast-pipe from contraction, 

 the fire from violent forcing, the boiler from rapid burning, and 

 the whole from ponderous weight, that damages the track and 

 calls for more power, more forcing, and so on, until the whole is 

 worn and torn, so that instead of dividends there are new bonds, 

 and other evidences of ruin. 



The Chairman alluded to the difficulty of this question as 

 verified in the case of the great steamship Adriatic, whose error 

 will prove very costly. 



Mr. Fisher offered a paper on the dynamometer, invented by 

 William B. Leonard, corresponding secretary and agent of this 

 Institute, which was read by the Secretary of the Club, (viz :) 



This dynamometer may be applied to sea steamers, or to loco- 



