TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 17l 



There is no department in engineering in which the peculiar toughness of steel 

 and its strength and power of resisting wear and abrasion are of such vital impor- 

 tance as in its application to railway purposes. This fact had long since impressed 

 itself strongly on the mind of Mr. Rauisbottorn, of the London and North Western 

 Railway, who commenced experiments with this material in 1861 ; carefully, though 

 trustingly, he tried it step by step, not even at first venturing to employ it for pas- 

 senger trains, but as proofs of its safety and economy crowded upon him, he care- 

 fully applied it to the most important parts of passenger engines, and even to the 

 manufacture of the formidable engine cranks (at the time entrusted only to the 

 most eminent iron-making firms in the kingdom) ; these iron cranks are now being 

 replaced by steel ones forged from a single mass. One of these steel cranks, manu- 

 factured at the new steel works at Crewe, has been obligingly lent by Mr. Rams- 

 bottom as an illustration of the use of steel for this purpose ; that gentleman has 

 also taken out of use a plain steel axle that has run a distance of 112,516 miles, and 

 now exhibits very slight signs of wear. 



The tires of wheels, on which so much of the public safety depends, were then 

 tried, but the exact amount of difference between the endurance of wrought iron 

 and Bessemer steel for this purpose is not yet ascertained, as none of these steel 

 tires are yet worn out ; but enough has been shown to prove the advantage of en- 

 tirely replacing iron by stee! for this purpose. 



In order to show how a steel tire will resist the most violent attempts to pro- 

 duce fracture, an example is given of a steel tire manufactured by Messrs. Bessemer 

 and Co., of Sheffield ; it was placed on edge under a six-ton steam-hammer, and 

 subjected to a series of powerful blows until it assumed its present form, that of a 

 figure of eight, a degree of violence immensely more than it coidd ever be subjected 

 to in practice. These tires are made without weld or joint, by forging them from 

 a square ingot partly under the improved plan invented by Mr. Ramsbottom, and 

 partly by an improved mode of flanging and rolling, invented by Mr. Allen, of the 

 Bessemer Steel Works, Sheffield. 



So important were found to be the advantages of employing cast steel as a sub- 

 stitute for wrought iron at the works of the London and North Western Railway 

 Company, that the directors, acting under the advice of their able engineer, deter- 

 mined on building large steel works at Crewe, which are now in active and suc- 

 cessful operation. In the design and arrangement of their plant for working up 

 the steel several important improvements have been introduced by Mr. Ramsbottom, 

 among others his duplex hammer, which strikes a bloom on both sides of the ingot 

 at once, in a horizontal direction, and thus renders unnecessary the enormous foun- 

 dations required for ordinary hammers. Here also he has put up his improved 

 rolling mill for rolling blooms of large size, the enormous machine being reversed 

 with the greatest rapidity and ease by the attendants, without any shock or con- 

 cussion whatever. 



While matters were thus steadily progressing in the engine department of the 

 Company, the engineer of the permanent way, Mr. Woodhouse, took in hand a 

 thorough investigation of a no less important problem, viz., the substitution of cast 

 steel for wrought-iron railway bars. For this purpose some 500 tons of rails were 

 made, and put down at various stations where the traffic was considerable, so as to 

 arrive, at the earliest period, at a true comparison of the respective endurance of 

 wrought-iron and cast-steel rails. It will be unnecessary here to enter into the 

 numerous details of the extensive series of experiments systematically carried out 

 by Mr. Woodhouse ; the trials made at Camden will suffice to show the extraor- 

 dinary endurance of steel rails. It is supposed that there is not one spot on any 

 railway in Europe where the amount of traffic equals that at the Chalk-farm bridge 

 at Camden Town. At this spot there is a narrow throat in the line, from which 

 converges the whole system of rails employed at the London termini of this great 

 railway. Here all passenger, goods, and coal traffic have to pass ; here also the 

 making-up of trains and shunting of carriages is continually going on. At this 

 particular spot two steel rails were fixed on May 2nd, 18G2, on one side of the line, 

 and two new iron rails were on the same day placed precisely opposite to them, so 

 that no engine or carriage could pass over the iron rails without passing over the 

 steel ones also. When the iron rails became too much worn to be any longer safe 



