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SCIENCE. 



53 



taring to hint that they would soon pass them. Now, however, as 

 usual with all changes in England, the progress there has taken a 

 great step forward, and even the lines south of London, or more 

 properly speaking, of the Thames Valley, are waking up, and the 

 French also have ventured to reduce the time of the Calais and 

 Paris express some fifteen minutes. 



The fastest train between London and Edinburgh has hitherto 

 been the Great Northern, from King's Cross, and it has performed 

 the journey of 396 miles in nine hours. This same train now per- 

 forms the distance in eight hours and a half, and of this tin^e there 

 are twenty minutes taken up for lunch at York, so that the run is 

 seen to be very excellent indeed. On the other hand, the North- 

 western, which has hitherto done the 401 miles between London 

 and Glasgow in ten hours, has knocked off a whole hour, and runs 

 the distance in nine hours, at a speed of forty-four and a half miles 

 per hour, including stoppages, which consume forty-five minutes. 

 Hence, while running, the speed is over forty-eight and a half miles 

 per hour. Of the distance of 401 miles, 190 are over the hills of 

 the Lake district and the Scottish Lowlands, but are covered at the 

 same speed, about forty-seven miles per hour. The Northwestern 

 line has to climb to an elevation of 870 feet over Shap Fell, and the 

 Caledonian si.xteen hundred feet at Beattock, with long grades of 

 seventy and seventy-five feet to the mile in both cases. The Mid- 

 land, again, which attains an elevation of fifteen hundred feet near 

 the head of the Eden Valley, and has a large number of severe 

 curves and gradients, runs 423 miles between London and Glasgow 

 in nine hours and twenty minutes. This is really a better perform- 

 ance than that of the Northwestern, for one of its trains runs 

 twenty-two miles further in only twenty minutes more time. Of 

 the sixty minutes reduction in time by the Northwestern train from 

 Euston station, it is remarkable that the whole of it is taken out of . 

 the running time, for the stops are as frequent and as long as be- 

 fore. 



The 250 miles between Manchester and Glasgow are completed 

 in five hours and fifty minutes, with six stoppages. 



Between Manchester and London there are run daily no fewer 

 than forty-two trains, which maintain a speed, including stoppages, 

 of over forty miles per hour, and as many as twenty-seven similar 

 trains between London and Liverpool. From London to Manches- 

 ter is 203i miles, and the shortest time is four and a quarter hours, 

 by the Great Northern, with a climb of a thousand feet, in Long- 

 dendale near Penistone. This run includes a stop of five minutes 

 at Grantham and of four minutes at Sheffield. The time of this 

 train is three hours and twelve minutes to Sheffield, which is 162J 

 miles from London. The speed is thus close upon fifty-one miles 

 to Sheftield, or, deducting a stop of five minutes at Grantham, over 

 fifty-two miles per hour, and this allows nothing for the slacking 

 off at stops and the time lost in attaining full speed, this loss being 

 always considerable with the large-wheeled engines used in En- 

 gland. 



These fast English expresses are by no means light trains : the 

 Scotch expresses especially are long, fully loaded trains, and the 

 speeds attained with regularity and punctuality as well as econ- 

 omically as regards fuel, ought to receive attention on this side of 

 the Atlantic, where it is the fashion to believe or pretend to believe 

 that English locomotives are inferior machines, and universally 

 provided with rigid wheel base, and unprovided with either bogies 

 or other means of axle radiation. 



The incorrectness of this assumption is shown by the following 

 facts. The three routes to Scotland are worked by the somewhat 

 different types of locomotives owned by four English and three 

 Scotch railways. One company, the London and Northwestern, 

 employ a single pair of wheels in radial guides under the front end 

 of the engine. Another, the Great Northern, use a four-wheel 

 truck witji cylindrical centre pin and no lateral motion, and the five 

 others employ the .'\dams four-wheel bogie, which has practically 

 universal motion, the centre pin being a portion of a sphere, and 

 ihe lateral motion being regulated by adjustable springs instead of 

 with links as in American trucks. Thus none of the heavy express 

 engines running these important trains have a rigid wheel base. 



Of the seven types of locomotives used, two are compound, one 

 is outside connected, and the other four are inside connected. One 

 has a single pair of drivers, one has four drivers but no coupling 



rods, being on Webb's system, and the other five have four coupled 

 drivers. 



Considerable difference of practice exists with regards to the 

 means of enabling the carriages to pass round curves. All the 

 routes use, more or less, six-wheel carriages, with from eighteen to 

 twenty-one feet wheel base, the boxes having some lateral motion 

 in the pedestals or axle guards as they are called. The standard 

 practice of the London & Northwestern is, however, an eight-wheel 

 carriage, the end wheels having a radial motion controlled by 

 springs. The Midland uses American pattern si-x-wheeled trucks 

 under long passenger carriages, and four-wheeled bogie, with inde- 

 pendent semi-elliptical springs above each journal box, dispensing 

 with the heavy equalizer and in some cases with bolster springs. 

 Two other lines use trucks under long carriages only, and the others 

 adhere generally to the six-wheel arrangement as being lighter and 

 simpler, though the motion round curves is not so smooth. 



A compound engine of Webb's system, and made by Beyer, 

 Peacock & Co.. of Manchester, will soon be tried upon the Pennsyl- 

 vania. As many of the fastest English trains are run regularly by 

 engines of this type, it wdl be of interest to note their performance 

 on American lines. Should the engine prove a failure, the cause 

 certainly cannot be laid to the engine in the face of the scheduled 

 speeds in ' Bradshaw,' which are not merely speeds on paper but 

 represent what is actually performed. Possibly the inferior quality 

 of American coal may be found unequal to supply steam in an 

 English fire-box, which, for the work done, is generally smaller 

 than in America. If this is not the case, there can be no reason 

 for failure, apart from unskilful handling. With such an example 

 of speeds before them is it not time that American trains made 

 faster running than they do ? England is a small country, and yet 

 the English, who work much shorter hours than the Americans do, 

 and must necessarily spend far less time in travelling between their 

 large cities, are not satisfied unless they travel at the very highest 

 possible speed. They certainly waste a half hour in stoppages 

 during a run of eight and a half hours, mainly for dining. Actually 

 therefore, they run four hundred miles in eight hours, and so would 

 cover the nine hundred miles from New York to Chicago in eigh- 

 teen hours, if they would dine on board the train. Travelling in 

 England is very much simpler than in America. The use of sleep- 

 ing cars is hardly necessary. Every important journey in the 

 country is performed in less than nine hours, and the majority of 

 the long journeys do not consume five hours. Hence sleepers and 

 dining cars are a superfluity, with which few travellers in England 

 care to be annoyed. In the United States they are indispensable, 

 and perhaps their use has had something to do with the slowness 

 of American trains. 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS IN WASHINGTON. 



The Topographic Maps of the United States Geological Survey : what 

 They Are and What They Show. — The Proposed National Zoolog- 

 ical Park ; its Location and the .Advantages of the Site. — How the 

 Japanese Ferment, ' Koji,' is Made. 



The United States Geological Survey's Topographic Maps. 



" Wh.\t business has the United States Geological Survey to be 

 spending the money appropriated for its work in making topo- 

 graphic maps on large-^scales ? " is a pertinent question that is often 

 asked, and more frequently of late since the Survey, in co-opera- 

 tion with some of the States, is rapidly pushing forward the work 

 of mapping the area of those particular States to completion. 

 "Why does not Major Powell, the Director of the Survey, send out 

 his geologists to study, arrange, and represent on a geological map 

 the rocks and minerals of the country, and let somebody else indi- 

 cate on maps the hills and valleys, the forests and streams, the 

 roads and towns ? " This question contains an implied criticism 

 of the management of the L'nited States Geological Survey that is 

 heard in Congress every session, and is repeated by men both in 

 and out of government employ who think that the Survey is over- 

 stepping the limits fixed for it by law. 



This question has been answered more than once, but it has 

 been in testimony given before a commission or a committee of 

 Congress, that never had a popular circulation, and which, if it had, 

 is so voluminous and mixed up that very few persons would sue- 



