High Peak, made in the interest of the Mont Cenis railway, conclusively settled the maximum gradient that it would be safe to use across the Alps previous to the opening of the Mont Cenis tunnel. With ordinary locomotives a 10 per cent. rise is not practicable. On a very fine day, the Cromford and High Peak engines, with a very ingenious sanding arrangement, could go up the Hindlow plane of 1 in 13. On a wet day they could not; but the Fell engines, which were tried on this road preparatory to their being sent to France, could go up any plane, (the steepest, the Upper Goyt, was a little better than 1 in 7,) and take one or two waggons behind them!! The author is not aware, that the Fell engine has ever been tried in America on any of the temporary roads, the switchbacks that Mr. Clarke seems to think are peculiarly an American invention. From the experiments on the Cromford and High Peak they are perfectly reliable up to gradients of 1 in 12, and will take their own weight behind them up such a grade. The locomotive in use on that road weighed a little over 13 long tons, say 30,000 lbs., and it could take easily four cars, each weighing with their load 15,000 lbs. or 60,000 lbs., together double its own weight, up the Whaley plane, averaging 1 in 13, or a rise of 406 feet in the mile. The writer can scarcely have known of these engines, which worked for three years the continental traffic between France and the East of Europe, or he would not have made some of the statements in the Magazine article.

Another great mistake made in connection with English and European practice is the general idea of Americans that everything in the old country is stationary and unchanged, and that the time of evolution and improvement has long since set in Europe to be found now only in America. "The Stephenson type of engine once fixed has remained unchanged in Europe, except in detail, to the present day. European locomotives have increased in weight and power, and in perfection of material and workmanship, but the general features are those of the locomotives built by the great firm of George Stephenson & Son, before 1840." So far from this being the case, the standard engine of the Stephenson works, (Robert Stephenson & Co., not George Stephenson & Son), from 1837 to 1842, has been entirely abandoned since 1844, and although other builders continued that excellent type for a number of years, and perhaps occasionally do so still, the Stephensons entirely gave it up after their patent of 1842 came into use, and this latter style has again since been altogether superseded. The Stephensons, after 1831, never had a monopoly of a locomotive

type. As before mentioned, Bury's engines always formed a separate type, so did the Allan engine, or Crewe engine of 1840, which is still the type of the Northern division of the North Western, of the Caledonian, and of some of the French railways. As far as the locomotive of different countries is concerned, the fixity of type, the absence of change, the slavish following of precedent is to be seen now more in America than any where. You travel from New Orleans to Montreal, from New York to the Pacific, and you see nothing but the one type of locomotive unchanged for forty years, the American 8 wheel, 4 coupled driver, truck engine, with inside frame and outside cylinders, with its Swedish iron laggings, and its monotonous uniformity. In England, on the contrary, the complaint justly made by a recent writer, that the type of locomotives varies on every railway, is unfortunately but too true, and the most casual observer cannot but notice it. The dull red colored machine, with its two coupled driving wheels and single leading wheel, heavy outside frame entirely covering up the inside cylinders and machinery, and which takes you in 43 hours from Liverpool to London on the Midland, is essentially different in design and arrangement from the bright green outside cylinder engine with its one huge driver, 8 feet 6 inches in diameter, of the Great Northern, or the North Western Compound, with its bright central polished cylinder cover, and its double machinery, each part working its separate uncoupled driving wheel. These three locomotives are as distinctly different from each other as any one of them is from the old Rocket, yet all run between the same termini, and are keenly competing for the same traffic. It is difficult to trace any resemblance between the Mediterranean engine of the great French company, the Lombardo Venetian, or the Belgian, yet all are in a constant state of alteration and struggle for improvement, and each developing and evolving its own type of ideas, and improving its own specific class of machine, although that improvement often, nay always, leads to a further divergence from the common original and from each other. The standard locomotive of the future has yet to be designed.

Mr. F. Brown

DISCUSSION.

It seems very fitting that this excellent paper should have been written in order to refute the misleading statements contained in the Magazine article referred to.

Any writings calculated to disturb existing good feeling and free interchange of ideas between Engineers all over the world are much to be deplored. Different countries have different circumstances to contend with, in designing motive power, and in these designs each contains some good point, which it is to our interest to profit by, and the extent of our mutual profit depends to a great degree upon mutual good feeling, which can hardly be encouraged by the publication of such articles as that which has called forth the paper under discussion.

As to the birth of the Locomotive, the sheets of diagrams with notations showing the growth of the Locomotive Engine, compiled by Mr. Theodore West of Darlington, England, plainly trace the stages of its development. The first we might notice is the Engine of Trevithick & Vivian of 1802, which is now in the South Kensington Museum. This is followed by a long list of locomotives of different types by "Trevithick," "Blenkinsop," "Hedley " and "Stephenson," dating up to 1828, all of which were operated with more or less success prior to the locomotive built by Foster, Rastrick & Co., of Stourbridge, shipped from England to America in 1829. The Engine was named the "Stourbridge Lion," and it was from this locomotive and from others successfully built in England and sent to America, that the American locomotives have been copied.

With reference to the so called "American improvements," it is certain that our American cousins have proved their well known ability in adopting inventions of others to improve their machinery. But in the many different types of locomotives which have been brought forward in the Uuited States, it cannot be denied that there have been many failures. To-day there is much said about a locomotive which carries nearly as much dead weight as efficient weight; the cost of this machine must be great, but this part is carefully kept in the back ground, and it is evident that first cost is not its strong point.

Again it is stated that "The Stephenson type once fixed has remained unchanged in Europe to the present day." Surely the writer

of this statement must be very ignorant of what is going on in Europe; he cannot have seen Mr. Stirling's magnificent express locomotive with eight foot driving wheels on the Great Northern Railway, which has been in successful operation for over twenty years, nor can he have seen the celebrated four-wheeled coupled express engines on the Midland. Is he ignorant of "Webb's Compound," or that of "Worsdell and Van Borries." And while speaking of Compounds, many will watch with much interest the performance of Webb's Compound on the Pennsylvania Railroad. The speaker would like to see one of "Worsdell and Van Borrie's" Compounds tried in Canada on the Canadian Pacific Railway.

It was said that the first and most far-seeing "invention

was that of the swivel truck, and that this was first suggested by Horatio Allen for the South Carolina Railway, in 1831. The author of such a remark cannot have known of the engine built by Vignoles & Ericsson in 1830, an outline of which is shown on Theodore West's sheet of early locomotives, and we are inclined to ask whether the miserable roadbed in America did not necessitate the use of a truck. If the first English road-beds had been as bad as the first American are admitted to have been, no doubt English engineers would have continued the use of the truck to overcome the difficulty, but it appears they were not called upon to overcome difficulties which did not exist.

The writer has read with great pleasure Mr. T. T. Vernon Smith's Mr. J. Aspinall most interesting paper upon the "Development of the Locomotive." He has succeeded in getting together in a short space a very large number of facts, which deal with the historical side of the question, and his paper upon that account is a most valuable one. Time, however, does not permit a criticism in detail. He must however be in error in saying "that comparatively few of the European engines have the bogie truck." Again he says that on the Midland Railway, it has never been adopted. This is not quite correct, as there are quite a number of engines running on that line with the bogie truck, and taking the case of the writer's own line, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway,-all the passenger engines built for it are fitted with bogie trucks.

Mr. H. Wallis said the author had dealt with his subject in an able Mr. H Wallis manner, and the facilities which had been afforded him for research rendered his paper the more valuable, as an historical collection of facts which the Society might be congratulated on having obtained.

There was one name which he thought had been unintentionally omitted. He would be sorry indeed to say aught with the object of detracting from the fame attaching to the name of Stephenson, but the history of the locomotive was incomplete without a reference to the work of William Hedley.

He thought that the credit of having settled the vexed question of adhesion belonged to Hedley, and that the use of the exhaust steam up-turned in the chimney was also with some reason claimed for him.

He agreed with previous speakers that as locomotives had to be designed to meet special conditions in various countries, comparisons without due regard to this fact were apt to be misleading.

Single track railways working heavy traffic required powerful engines, in order to minimise mileage and reduce the delay consequent on the passing and crossing of trains at stations.

Iron and steel for tubes and fireboxes superseded brass and copper with the advent of coal as fuel, the softer metals not having the necessary wearing qualities under conditions of heavy traffic and the forced draught necessitated by the use of the spark-arresting cone in the smoke stack. The extended smoke box was an American device for softening the exhaust and maintaining the draught, which was seriously checked by the interposition of the cone.

The dry atmospheric conditions which prevailed in Canada and the United States required the adoption of means to prevent the escape of cinders and sparks, which were unnecessary in many other countries, but the fact that all such devices more or less interfered with the free working of engines constituted a disadvantage in obtaining economical results.

While American ingenuity had been greatly employed in improving existing inventions, it could not be said to be wanting in originality. England was undoubtedly the cradle of the locomotive, but the claims of America to recognition for a place in its improvement to meet special conditions could not be overlooked.

The tank engines of the Midland and Metropolitan, or Underground, railways used the bogie truck as a system certainly twenty years ago. The use of the truck or bogie was to secure an easy motion when an engine took a curve.

The railways of this country were not so expensively constructed as in England, where the receipts per train were higher and the train mileage per mile of railway in some cases four times as much.

The percentage of curve to tangent was naturally therefore in excess,