Steel rails,
double the weight of the original iron ones, are used. Wooden sleepers
have replaced the stone blocks, and they, in their turn, will probably
give way to sleepers of steel. The joints are now made by means of
fish-plates, and the most vulnerable part of the rail, the end, is no
longer laid on an anvil for a purpose of being smashed to pieces, but
the ends of the rails are now almost always over a void, and thereby
are not more affected by wear than is any other part of the rail. The
speed is now from 50 to 60 miles an hour for passenger trains, while
slow speed goods engines, weighing 45 tons, draw behind them coal
trains of 800 tons. The injector is now commonly employed, and, by its
aid, a careful driver of the engine of a stopping train can fill up
his boiler while at rest at the stations. The link motion is in common
use, to which, no doubt, is owing the very considerable economy with
which the locomotive engine now works.
As regards the question of safety, it is a fact that, notwithstanding
the increased speed, railway accidents are fewer than they were at the
slow speed. It is also a fact, that if the whole population of London
were to take a railway journey, there would be but one death arising
out of it. Four millions of journeys for one death of a passenger from
causes beyond his own control is, I believe, a state of security which
rarely prevails elsewhere.
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