PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 15 
and out, over crooked lines and bad joints without going 
off the road. Why? Because all the joints are loose. 
Not a very nice state of things you will say, but there is 
evidently safety in loose joints nevertheless. 
American engineers lay themselves out for flexibility, 
and in fact there is an adaptability about American prac- 
tice which is to be highly commended. Iam not referring 
to their workmanship and material, which unfortunately 
often leave much to be desired, but to the application of 
right principles and to their broadmindedness and rejection 
of everything narrow. This leads in the end to progress. 
When in America in 1894, I observed that the curves pre- 
viously mentioned, were negotiated by locomotives of the 
consolidation type, while on the continent of Hurope articu- 
lated locomotives of the Mallet and other types were used. 
Practice seems to have got reversed, for while within the 
last few years Mallet articulated engines have been 
built by the Baldwin Co. and the American Loco. Co., I 
found that, on the continent of Hurope, there were less of 
the Mallet, Hagan or Meyer type than formerly, and that 
the tendency was to revert tothe ordinary locomotive not 
articulated, flexibility being however given where required 
by some such method as the Golsdorf, allowing for lateral 
shifting of wheels and axles as required to accommodate 
themselves to curves. With this contrivance it is stated 
that a 10 wheeled coupled locomotive, for standard gauge, 
can readily traverse 5 chain curves. 
In England at the present time, Kitson of Leeds, Beyer 
and Peacock, and others, are building articulated locomo- 
tives with two pairs of cylinders and a single boiler, the 
former having supplied a number for Rhodesia and else- 
where, while the North British Locomotive Co. have been 
building locomotives of the Fairlie type for Mexico. Imay 
say that all the firms I have referred to in Great Britain, 
