BY WHICH. THEY CONTEMPLATE EXTENDING THEIR LINE OF CONVEYANCE.

BY JOHN VALLANCE.

PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE COMPANY.

LONDON:

GEORGE WIGHTMAN, 24, PATERNOSTER ROW.

1833.

"Under circumstances of this sort, there can be no doubt that those microcosmic minds, which, habitually occupied in the consideration of what is little, are incapable of discerning what is great, and who already stigmatise the proposition as a romantic scheme, will, not unsparingly, distribute the epithets-absurd, ridiculous, chimerical. The commissioners must, nevertheless, have the hardihood to brave the sneers and sarcasms of men who, with too much pride to study, and too much wit to think, undervalue what they do not understand, and condemn what they cannot comprehend."

Report on the Practicability of the Erie and Hudson Canal.

J. S. Hodson, Printer, Cross Street, Hatton Garden

A LETTER, &c.

MY LORD AND GENTLEMEN,

THE contemplated addition of a railway to your line of conveyance, induces me to solicit the honour of your attention to a method of effecting your object, which may, perhaps, prove the cheapest and best you can adopt.

From the statements of the gentlemen who gave explanations on the subject at the meeting, your object appears to be, to effect some method of communication between your basin at Kensington, and some point of the Grand Junction Canal, and the proposed London and Birmingham Railway, which may enable you, either to take advantage of the Grand Junction Canal as a channel to convey and receive goods to and from, or of the proposed railway to Birmingham; so that you may be able to convey passengers to and from that railway, and to and from the western parts of town, should it be put into operation.

Your present line being a water line, I should, were it not for the intervention of the high ground which is between your basin and the Grand Junction Canal, recommend the extension of this water line; because an additional expenditure of 9007. or 10007., to provide a couple of the gigs by which passengers are now conveyed at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour along the Paisley and Ardrossan Canal, would then enable you to carry any number of passengers to and from the Birmingham Railway considerably faster, and many times cheaper, than omnibuses, &c. &c. would convey them to and from the town end of that railway.

But as the numerous locks, which the height of that ground renders necessary, would occasion the loss of all the time which the newly-discovered method of rapid conveyance on canals might save, the extension of your present line appears to be incompatible with your object of rendering such extension adapted to the rapid conveyance of passengers, as well as goods at the usual rate.

This impediment is not, however, the only circumstance which would make me pause in recommending the extension of your canal. It is publicly stated that the estimated expense of extending your canal the two and a half miles you contemplated was 150,0007.; while this would not be the sole expense attending it.

Owing to there being no water to supply the waste of the numerous locks which you must construct, to raise barges to the height you wish to surmount, you would have, in addition to extending your canal, to be also at the expense of laying down large water-pipes all along it; and of erecting steam-engines, and pumps, to raise up from the Thames, every drop of the water you would require to lower your barges down to it. The first cost of doing this would be very considerable: since,

in addition to the steam-engines, pumps, and two and a half miles of large pipe which you must lay down, you must also be at the expense of purchasing ground at the end of your proposed extension, for the site of, and excavating the earth to form, a large reservoir, for the water to be pumped up into to supply the locks.

Great, however, as would be the first cost of thus providing water to work the proposed extension of your canal, yet would this first cost be less important than the current expenses of it; since for every barge that passed through your canal, you would have to pump above two hundred tons of water, nearly 100 feet high: than which, nothing can be conceived more contrary to principles of economy; it being tantamount to having to lift a whole hundred weight up, every time you extended your hand to put a quarter of a hundred weight down. Were it necessary that those two hundred tons of water should be pumped only when you raised a barge up with (or by means of) them, it would not be so vexatious.

But to be forced to pump two hundred tons up, in order to float the smallest load a barge carries down your canal, would be so contrary to all principles of economical conveyance, as well as costly, that it becomes unavoidable to seek for some other means of transmission.

That which first struck you as applicable to your object, was a rail-way; since, by means of it, passengers may be conveyed as well as goods; so that, should any circumstance connected with the London and Birmingham Railway ever render it desirable, you might, then, convey passengers along your line. But though this could certainly be done, yet would the attainment of that certainty be attended with an expense, which might prove greater than the value of the purchase.

The avoidance of ascents which are at all abrupt, is now stated to be of such consequence as relates to the diminution of the daily expenses of railways, and so important with respect to what locomotive engines can do upon them, that it is current as the dictum of the principal engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway, that it is better to lay down six miles of railway to avoid (by going round it) a rise of 174 feet in one mile (an ascent of about an inch in a yard, that is) than to carry one mile of railway over said rise. And the junior engineer to that railway stated before the Lords' Committee, that for a locomotive engine to get over a rise of fifty feet in height, was "nearly equal to going four miles round."

The fuel consumed being the principal item of expense in locomotive engines, and the price of fuel with you being nearly ten times greater than on the Liverpool and Manchester line†, the attainment of the desideratum of as regular an ascent as can be procured, becomes, according to this doctrine, more important as relates to your line, than it would be where fuel was cheaper, in proportion to the dearness of that fuel. A regular plane of ascent may, therefore, be considered indispensable to the proper operation of any railway you might lay down.

Were you to do the utmost that could be done towards obtaining this regular plane of ascent, between your proposed points of departure and arrival, by cutting and embanking so as to make

* I have known a barge of (apparently) fifty tons burthen, come up the whole length of your canal, with nothing but fourteen tons of coal to land at your basin.

In his Report on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, Mr. Walker states the price of the 40,000 tons of coal, which he supposed might be required for the locomotive engines, at 5s. 107. per ton. The 25,000 tons which he supposed might be required for the stationary engines, he states at the price of 2s. 6d. per ton.

In their review of this Report, Messrs. Stephenson and Locke state the price of coal at 4s. 6d. per ton for 37,222 tons.

your line one continuous inclined plane, it would still be so remote from a level, as to rise at the rate of one foot of perpendicular height for 154 feet of horizontal distance; which would make the power required to draw any load along your line nearly twice as great as that which would be requisite to draw the same load on a level; while it would also present a sharper rise than some railways where stationary engines are the only moving power employed, owing to locomotives being considered unfit for railways so inclined.

Supposing your line, which must have the same number of rails that the Birmingham Railroad is to have (two lines of way that is) to be no wider than that railway is to be in the narrowest part, the amount of embanking necessary to render your plane of ascent regular to this degree would not be so little as one million of cubic yards.

In the evidence before the Lords' Committee on the London and Birmingham Railway it is stated, that on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway there are about three millions of cubic yards of cuttings and embankments. It being known that the money paid by that Company for this purpose has exceeded two hundred thousand pounds, it may be presumed that the expense of one third of that amount of cutting and embanking on your line would not be less than about 70,0007.; while, as the nature of the ground your line must pass through, would render the proportion of embankments much greater than that of excavations, this amount of 70,000l. would be added to, by your being actually compelled to purchase the earth itself which would be required for those embankments, as well as to pay for the labour of digging and conveying it to where you wanted it.

Long lines of work being done for much less expense per mile than short ones; the London and Birmingham Railway being a very long line (112 miles); the engineers of that railway having the very highest reputation as railway engineers; and the estimates laid before Parliament by those gentlemen for that railway, being the best authority it is possible to refer to as relates to the probable cost of a railway-I shall, for these reasons, and in order to prevent your supposing that my own opinion affects my statement, advert to the anticipated expense of that railway per mile as a measure of the cost of yours.

Deducting the estimated expense of cutting and embanking, from the general estimate of the London and Birmingham Railway, the average estimated expense of the other work of the two lines of way now proposed for that road (instead of the four lines of which it was to consist) is 20,6317. per mile.*

And as it is not evident why your short line should be done for less comparative expense than this long one (while it is to be presumed that it would cost much more), it may be assumed that the actual expense of attempting to make a railway, on which the tractive force required for any load

* The capital requisite to complete this railway was first announced to be a million and a half. Then it was raised to two millions. Then it was raised to three millions, in order to adinit of a "quadruple line" (that is, eight lines of rails,) being laid down. And credit is now taken for its cheapness, because, after announcing that three millions would be sufficient to lay down a "quadruple" railway, two millions and a half are stated as the estimated expense of a "double" railway. That is, after having, by advertisement upon advertisement, announced that three millions would be enough to lay down eight lines of rails, credit is taken for finding out that four lines will cost two millions and a half: when the fact is, that the estimated expense is reduced only one-sixth, while the work which said three millions were stated to be enough to do, is reduced one half. In other words, twopence-halfpenny is charged for half the loaf, after it had been, in every possible way trumpetted forth, that the whole loaf would be sold for threepence: while even this twopence-halfpenny is liable to additions such as the following pages advert to.