CONSTRUCTION OF COACHES. ^ 99 



presume was built and sent over by Purcell. It was 

 not, however, adopted ; nor has the plan of dispensing 

 with a perch, so far as I am aware, ever been tried for 

 stage-coaches, or for mails in England. 



Mr. McNeill at that time (1835) was surveyor of 

 the road from London to Holyhead, and being present 

 at the exhibition of coaches in St. James's Square, 

 gave some valuable and interesting information to 

 the Postmaster-General on the draught of carriage- 

 springs, and the machine he had invented for testing 

 the draught of carriages and the resistance on roads. 

 He was not favourably impressed with the Irish coach, 

 thinking that a mail- carriage should have a perch. 



In the construction and weight of carriages there 

 appears to have been a great difference of opinion 

 and uncertainty, up perhaps to nearly the time when 

 road-miails and stage-coaches were superseded by the 

 railways. Persons who horsed the Holyhead mail, 

 and also kept post-horses, often said that gentlemen's 

 carriages, which they also horsed, weighed much 

 more than mail-coaches or any stage-coaches. This 

 must have referred to the time when the mail- 

 coaches had been very much reduced in weight, from 

 twenty-two or twenty-three hundredweight to little 

 over seventeen. 



The coach-masters undoubtedly were the persons most 

 deeply interested in the adoption of any plan for facili- 



7—2 



