LOCOMOTIVE ENGINES.
I come now to the engines used for railways. At the British
Association meeting of 1831, the Manchester and Liverpool Railway had
been opened only about a year. The Stockton and Darlington coal line,
it is true, had carried passengers by steam power as early as 1825,
but I think we may look upon the Manchester and Liverpool as being the
beginning of the passenger and mercantile railway system of the
present day. At that time the locomotives weighed from eight to ten
tons, and the speed was about 20 miles per hour, with a pressure of
from 40 to 50 lb. The rails were light; they were jointed in the
chairs, which were generally carried on stone blocks, thus affording
most excellent anvils for the battering to pieces of the ends of the
rails--that is to say, for the destruction of the very parts where
they were most vulnerable. The engines were not competent to draw
heavy trains, and it was a common practice to have at the foot of an
incline a shed containing a "bank engine," which ran out after the
trains as they passed, and pushed them up to the top of the hill.
Injectors were then unknown, and donkey-pumps were unknown, and
therefore, when it was necessary to fill up the boiler, if it had not
been properly pumped up before the locomotive came to rest, it had to
run about the line in order to work its feed-pumps.
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