TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 503 



the toiler requires expensive repairs frequently ; the reservoir of a fireless engine 

 will last thirty years, and will require hardly any repair. 



The tireless locomotive possesses all the elements of safety that can he required 

 in an engine intended to run in the streets of towns and along country roads. 



Explosion is impossible ; there is no firebox to be damaged ; no hot cinders can 

 be thrown into the fields. There is no firelight to alarm— no steam escaping from 

 valves, no whistle, nothing to frighten the most timid animal, as in ordinary 

 engines. There is no smoke ; neither the passengers nor the travellers on the road 

 can be annoyed by the sulphurous fumes of burning coke, or smothered with coal 

 smoke. There is no soot to blacken the linen and clothes of passengers, nor to 

 soil the carriages inside or out. There is no flame rising from the smoke pipe, or 

 hot cinders or ashes to burn passengers' clothes. There is no disagreeable smell of 

 burning coal or oil, and the traction is more easy and more pleasant than even that 

 of horses. 



Fireless locomotives have worked the traffic on the Eueil and Marly Kailway, 

 and are still working it now, with a perfect regularity, from the early part of 

 July 1878. . 



They never had any accident nor stoppage on the road, even during the 

 severe winter of this year. Their weight, when empty, is six tons ; they contain 

 two tons of water when they start from Marly, where is the feeding boiler always 

 in fire. The steam in the reservoir is at a pressure of fifteen atmospheres at the 

 departure, and only four atmospheres, at the return, after a run there and back of 

 fifteen kilometres, nearly ten miles. The weight of steam drawn from the 

 reservoir for working the engine is only 200 kilogrammes (^ of its first volume). 



It requires about twenty minutes to replace those 200 kilogrammes by the same 

 weight of steam drawn from the feeding boiler. 



When the pressure in the reservoir of the locomotive is the same as in the fixed 

 boiler, the engine is fit for working, and may wait several hours without a sensible 

 loss in the pressure of its steam. 



The engine can run with four or five tramway cars. The number of passengers 

 varies from 60 to 250 per train. 



These fireless locomotives have worked the traffic of the Eueil and Marly Rail- 

 way for more than one year. They run regularly at half-hour intervals from 6 a.m. 

 to 12 at night. The service has given general satisfaction to the passengers, to the 

 inhabitants along the line, and to the railway company. It may be concluded 

 therefore that the fireless locomotive of Mons. Francq is not only an elegant and 

 simple engine, but it possesses incontestable advantages in point of economy, and 

 probably will solve the important problem of a mechanical power applied to the 

 working of short lines of railway along roads and of tramways in towns. 



FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 1879. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. On Self-acting Intermittent Syphons and the Conditions which determine 

 the commencement of their Action. By Rogers Field. — See Reports, 

 p. 223. 



2. On recent advances in Electric Lighting. 

 By James N. Shoolbred, B.A., Mem. Inst. C.E. 



Twelve months ago electric lighting, in its application at least, was hardly 

 known in England, except in connection with a few lighthouses ; now there is 

 scarcely a large town in the United Kingdom where this light has not been 



