TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 1191 
I make no apology for quoting his exact words, as a reminder of the past and a 
warning for the future: ‘At the end of the last war the guns were in such a bad 
state that, when fired, they would scarcely hit an enemy, and during the latter 
period of the American war a secret order was issued that British ships of war 
should not engage American frigates, because the former were in such an inefficient 
state.’ As for himself, said the plain-spoken old admiral, when he got the order he 
put it in ‘the only place fit to receive it, the quarter-gallery.’ 
Happily, from our insular position, the change which the progress of mechanical 
science has wrought in military operations has not been brought home to the people 
of this country in the same vivid manner that it has to the people of the continents 
of Europe and America. In the American war, the Franco-German war, and the 
-Russo-Turkish war the construction and equipment of railway works by engineers 
was an essential part of all great movements. The Russians, in 1877, constructed 
a railway from Bender to Galatz, 189 miles in length, in 58 working days, or at the 
rate of more than three miles per day. Altogether, in the three latter months of 
that year they laid out and built about 240 miles of railway, and purchased and 
stocked the line with 110 locomotives and 2,200 wagons. They also built 
numerous trestle bridges, together with an opening bridge and a ferry across the 
Danube. 
We have had recent experiences of the slowness of primitive modes of transport 
in the tedious advance of Lord Wolseley’s handful of men in whale-boats up the 
Nile. It was the intention of the late Khedive, partly from military and partly 
from commercial considerations, to construct a railway exactly on the line of 
advance subsequently followed by Wolseley. My partner, Mr. Fowler, had the 
railway set out in 1873, and the works were shortly after commenced. The total 
length was 550 miles, and the estimated cost, including rolling-stock and repairing- 
shops, was 4,000,000/. Owing to financial difficulties the works were abandoned, 
but the 64 miles constructed by Mr. Fowler, and the recent extensions of the same 
by the military, proved of great service to the expedition, even some of the steam 
launches being taken by railway to save delays at the cataracts. 
During the siege of Paris the German forces were dependent upon supplies 
drawn from their base, and the army requirements were fully met by one line of 
railway running twelve to fourteen trains per day. Military authorities state that 
a train load of about 250 tons is equal to two days’ rations and corn for an army 
corps of 37,000 men and 10,000 horses. The military operations in Egypt have 
proved that, even in the heart of Africa, railways, steamboats, electric lights, 
machine guns, and other offspring of mechanical science, are essential ingredients of 
success. 
Members of this Section, who visited the United States last year not for the first 
time, could hardly have failed to notice that American and European engineering 
practice are gradually presenting fewer points of difference. arly American iron 
railway bridges were little more than the ordinary type of timber bridge done into 
iron, and the characteristic features, therefore, were great depth of truss, forged 
links, pins, screw-bolts, round or rectangular struts, cast-iron junction pieces, and, 
in brief, an assemblage of a number of independent members more or less securely 
bolted together, and not, as in European bridges, a solidly riveted mass of plates 
and angle-bars. At the present moment the typical American bridge is distinctly 
derived from the grafting of German practice on the original parent stock. Pin 
connections are still generally used in bridges of any size, but the top members and 
connections are more European than American in construction, whilst for girders 
of moderate span, such as those on the many miles of elevated railway in New 
York, riveted girders of purely European type are admittedly the cheapest and 
most durable. From my conversations with leading American bridge builders, I 
am satisfied that their future practice and our own will approach still more nearly. 
We should never think of building another Victoria tubular bridge across the St. 
Lawrence, or repeat the design of the fallen Tay bridge, nor would they again 
imitate in iron an old timber bridge, or repeat the design of the fallen Ashtabula 
bridge. In one respect the practice in America tends to the production of better 
and cheaper bridges than does our own practice, and it is this: each of the great 
