474 NEW COMPOUND RAIL. 



other expenses of the company. When we consider the large snms 

 necessarily required for repairs of engines and rolling stock generally, 

 repairs of buildings and fences, management, salaries, office and station 

 expenses, fuel, oil and waste, legal expenses, damages, taxes, &c., it 

 appears not a little astonishing that the cost of keeping the iron rails 

 in a proper state of safety and usefulness should bear such a large 

 proportion to the gross expenditure on those various services. 



That the maintenance of the permanent way, forming such a 

 heavy charge against the revenue of a company, indicates some 

 defect in its construction, is quite within the bounds of possibility ; it 

 at least leaves an opening for enquiry, if not for some improvement, 

 in that portion of a railway which is permanent only in name. 



For some years back an endless variety of plans have been invented 

 to render more perfect this essential part of railways. Many of them 

 have been tried with various degrees of success, while not a few have, 

 by common consent, remained the useless property of their origina- 

 tors. The plan now submitted may form an addition to the long list 

 of those last mentioned, although I am not without hopes that on a 

 consideration of the advantages which it appears to possess, it may 

 justify the cost of a practical test, and perhaps be a means not 

 only of enhancing the comfort and safety of railway travellers, but 

 also of assisting in some degree to make railways pay, by reducing the 

 present heavy cost of maintenance. 



It is of vast importance to ascertain the weak and defective points of 

 existing systems of " permanent way," since, by so doing, we know 

 where remedies should be applied. Experience shows that the ordin- 

 ary rail track is defective in one essential principle, inasmuch as its 

 continuity of strength is broken at the ends of every rail bar. The 

 joints being deficient in the requisite strength, they are affected more 

 than other parts of the rail bars by the weight and percussive 

 shocks of passing loads, the ballast underneath yields from the 

 unequal pressure, the chairs and spikes at these points constantly get 

 broken and displaced, and as a consequence the whole track, without 

 frequent inspection and repairs, rapidly becomes deranged. The 

 climate of this country too, I am constrained to believe, tells much 

 more severely on the permanent way, as at present constructed, than 

 it does in England, The frost enters the ground to a great depth, 

 and results at certain seasons in softening the substratum. Thereupon 

 a depression of the ballast under the weight of train, and a vertical work- 



