HIGH SPEED RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION AND WORKING. XXXVII. 



now covered in 8 hours, I.e., an afternoon and evening, or 

 else a niglit, and there is hardly any conceivable speed, 

 taking into consideration the fatigue necessarily involved, 

 which would practically diminish the time now withdrawn 

 from business by the present service. 



Both in the House of Commons enquiry last year, on the 

 Manchester and Liverpool Express Railway project, and 

 having regard to other engineering opinions, it is very 

 generally admitted that the limit of speed on ordinary 

 steam locomotive railways has been now nearly reached. 

 This is partly on account of the impossibility of increasing 

 the size and weight of the engine to obtain the necessary 

 power, without reconstructing, by widening and strength- 

 ening, the lines, and partly on account of the reciprocating 

 action of the propelling machinery and its inferior acceler- 

 ating power. There is also the impossibility, unless a special 

 high speed line is proposed, of adjusting the superelevation 

 of the outer rail in curves to great variations of speed. 



The proof of these two facts as regards the United 

 Kingdom, the absence of great demand for higher speed 

 than is obtained at present, and the practical difficulty of 

 attaining it at profitable cost, is to be found in the fact 

 that though there is keen competition between the London 

 and North Western, Midland, and Great Northern railways 

 to the north, the through speed has not practically exceeded 

 50 miles per hour for some years back. In fact, the great 

 additional power provided in the modern passenger loco- 

 motive over its predecessor, is expended not in increased 

 speed, attained years ago with a limited number of light 

 trains, but in maintaining it with a greater number of trains 

 with heavier vehicles. Many of them contain complete 

 restaurant and sleeping accommodation and other comforts, 

 all implying great weight, on which, rather than higher 

 speed, the public have insisted. 



