RAILWAYS AND LOCOMOTIVES.

LECTURE I.

CIVIL AND MILITARY ENGINEERING-RAILWAY CONVEYANCE-WATER CARRIAGE-TRACTION-FIRST COST OF WORKS-GRADIENTS

In commencing this series of lectures on Railways I feel myself under considerable difficulty. The subject is so large, and embraces such a quantity and variety of matter, that it is not easy to make a selection that will be of interest and utility to military men, and will also come legitimately and usefully within the scope of a lecture from a civil engineer to those who are studying their profession in all its branches here. On the one hand I fear I may omit subjects which might with advantage be included, and on the other hand I fear I may include subjects which are already trite.

In many matters the work of a military engineer is almost identical with that of a civil engineer. This is the case particularly with those earth-works and structures of brick, stone, or iron which belong to fortification. In erecting and maintaining, and even in destroying, these works, you have to deal with the same forces of nature as we have to consider in the construction of railways, buildings, or docks.

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The circumstance that many, perhaps the greater number, of the leading features of railway construction are embraced in the course of study essential to your profession, alone makes it possible for me to hope to set forth in six lectures the outlines of the subject which I have undertaken to bring before you. Knowing that your course of study here will instruct you in the general principles of constructive engineering, on which the earth-works, bridges, viaducts, tunnels, and other structures of all railways are designed and executed, I have discarded the notion of entering into the details of those subjects, and propose to apply myself to discussing the matters which specially belong to the laying out, the maintaining, and the working of a railway.

A reason, if one were necessary, for the present course of lectures, is to be found in the number of civil appointments connected with railways which, either in this country, or in India, or in our colonial empire, are filled with so much distinction by members of your corps.

A further and perhaps more important reason exists in the bearing of railways upon military operations. No one can have followed the course of modern warfare without seeing of how great importance a knowledge of many such matters of detail must be to the Royal Engineers. It is scarcely necessary here to enlarge on this subject, or to urge how essential it is that such matters should form part of the course of study of a military engineer. It is evident that at some of those crises which occur in war, such special knowledge may be of paramount importance. Indeed the ability of an engineer officer to construct, or to reopen with rapidity, the essential parts of a railway, and some acquaintance on his part with railway working, or the possession of some apparently unimportant technical knowledge of the various

RAILWAYS AND OTHER MODES OF CONVEYANCE.

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modes of evading, surmounting, or counteracting a railway difficulty (which would perhaps be at the finger ends of a railway engineer or foreman), may make the difference of a town or army being victualled or not, or of a body of troops being transported to their destination or left behind, and so inay alter the fortunes of a campaign.

To attempt to forecast all the difficulties that you may have to overcome, in emergencies such as those to which I have referred, or to endeavour to suggest to you all the means which are available for grappling with each of them, would be an endless and a mistaken task. I shall best effect my purpose by putting before you those special features of railway construction which are not mere matters of applied mechanics, and by describing, as well as I can within the limits at my disposal, the mode in which railways for civil and commercial purposes are laid out, constructed, and worked. I shall also at the conclusion of the course refer briefly to some of the methods which in ordinary railway working are employed in dealing with various emergencies or mishaps.

I propose, then, to take in order the questions that arise for consideration in regard to the laying out and the construction of a railway; and of these the first point to be considered is undoubtedly whether in any given case it is or is not desirable to construct a railway at all. Do not suppose that I am beginning outside the reasonable limits of the subject. Any one of you may some day have to determine whether it is best to substitute a railway for, or to add a railway to, the existing means of conveyance by the roads of a country, or whether water carriage in some form or other ought not rather to be maintained, improved, or introduced.

Let us, therefore, consider some of the salient features.

of the comparison between railways and other modes of

conveyance.

It is almost impossible to do justice to the magnitude of the results which have been attained in the improvements of locomotion since the introduction of railways. We have it brought oftentimes prominently before us by the literature of fifty years ago, when the speed of a well-appointed fast coach seemed perfection. But I would call your attention to the fact that the contrast between an average speed of nearly eleven miles an hour by the Quicksilver or any other of the favourite coaches of the last generation on a long journey over excellent turnpike roads, and the forty-five miles an hour average speed of our express trains on first-class railways, is as nothing to the contrast between the travelling of fifty years ago in Russia, South America, India, or any of those formerly almost roadless countries, and the twenty or twenty-five miles an hour average speed on the railways which have been constructed of late years in those localities. In England and in Western Europe the introduction of railways meant an improvement, certainly great, but after all, an improvement of degree; in other countries, such as those which I have mentioned, it meant a difference of kind, through which many places became accessible which were formerly practically inaccessible, and produce which was formerly worthless by reason of the want of means of locomotion became of value.

In this country the materials for road-making are so easily obtained, and we are always within so short a distance from the sea, that no place can be very inaccessible, even for the free interchange of heavy merchandise or minerals, and one must go to other countries to appreciate the changes introduced by railways. It

was lately my lot to go to the River Plate States of the Argentine Republic for the purpose of laying out a railway; and there the difference between railways and no railways is immense, and such as I have alluded to above as being not a difference of degree but of kind. In that great rolling plain, formed entirely of alluvial deposit, there is no gravel or stone fit for metalling, and it is in fact impossible to make a road which will be passable, after a week's heavy rain, for carts or even for bullock waggons. In winter goods traffic is almost entirely suspended, and it is no uncommon thing for a waggon, drawn by twenty oxen, in fairly good weather, to occupy months on a journey of 150 or 200 miles, while for passengers, even in the most favourable weather, the only means of travelling is in waggons or on horseback. contrast between such a state of things and the convenience of the slowest railway is greater than anything we know of in Europe, except, perhaps, in the remote parts of Russia.

The

In some countries, then, a railway competes with good roads, and it is a mere matter of expense or convenience whether goods and passengers be carried on the road or on the railway, whereas in other countries. the railway may be said to be without any competitor, for unless goods be conveyed by the railway they cannot at many seasons of the year be transported at all.

Another rival to traffic by railway to be considered is, as I have said, water carriage. Water carriage includes carriage by sea, by rivers, and by canals. Broadly speaking, it may, I think, be stated that for long distances, where the expense of loading and unloading the ships and the expenditure on port dues are small compared with the total cost of a voyage, railways cannot in the conveyance of heavy goods or minerals compete in