DERAILED VEHICLES.

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with their wheels off the rails for the whole time, and bumping over sleepers and chairs till they reached a crossing, where they jumped on to the rails. When the fore part of the train stopped, the two hindmost carriages were found on the rails, and so far as their under carriages was concerned were almost uninjured.

From this you will appreciate what I said a short time ago about the amount of brutality which we may use towards both rolling stock or permanent way. When a stoppage takes place from a train having run off the road, the great thing generally is to get the line open, and one must not consider too much whether or not a little damage to the rolling stock or permanent way may be occasioned in so doing. Such damage is very readily repaired, and is seldom worthy of much consideration, compared with the importance of clearing the line.

Do not suppose, however, that because a vehicle looks all on one side, and appears ready to topple over, you can clear the line best by tumbling it over out of the way, unless you have considered how far you will have to lift one side of it. It may not be such an easy job as it looks, for in spite of its appearance the centre of gravity may be well within the base.

In all operations such as those I have briefly described, the value of consentaneous effort will be apparent. If there are four screw-jacks at work at lifting an engine or carriage, they must all be worked under the command of one man, and should very often be worked synchronously. In traversing, the greatest care is necessary to prevent any unequal stress or sideways nip on any point which would result in damage to the screw-jack, or some worse disaster. The screw-jack should be treated lovingly, and with none of the brutality on which we may venture with respect to the permanent way or rolling stock, for the value

of every screw-jack in a railway disaster is great, and it cannot generally be replaced or readily repaired.

All railway companies have what is termed a breakdown train, which consists of one or two vans loaded with screw-jacks, packings, ramps, and other appliances for use in getting vehicles back to the rails. There is usually in such break-down trains a crane, mounted on a truck, and capable of lifting from 10 to 20 tons, which is often extremely useful in picking up vehicles which have been turned over, or for lifting one end of an engine. In the break-down train there ought to be also spare fish-plates, bolts, chairs, fang-bolts, spikes, and other small articles for use in repairing the permanent way, and it can do no harm to have some surgical stores as well.

It is, I think, so important that an engineer likely to have charge of a military railway should have some practical appreciation of how derailed vehicles can be dealt with, that I venture to suggest that if ever you meet with an engine or even a carriage off the rails, you should, even at some sacrifice of time, wait and see the way in which the foremen and workmen accustomed to such work proceed to get it on the line. One such example would be ten times as useful as any remarks I can make here.

In conclusion I must thank you for the attention with which you have listened to this course of lectures, including as it has done a mass of details which, I fear, must have been at times anything but interesting, and I must apologise for my shortcomings in the art, for it is an art, of lecturing. I trust at any rate you will believe that it has been a sincere pleasure to me to come amongst you, and that I have endeavoured, to the best of my ability, to bring before you some of the matters of which experience has shown me the utility in railway making and railway working.

F. J. BRAMWELL, F.R.S., M. INST. C.E.

RAILWAYS AND LOCOMOTIVES.

LECTURE I.

EARLY LOCOMOTIVES-MODERN LOCOMOTIVES-PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN -HORSE-POWER-TRACTION-WEIGHT ON WHEELS-USE OF STEAM -TYPES OF MODERN LOCOMOTIVES-CONSUMPTION OF FUEL

BOILER SAFETY VALVE-INJECTOR.

I DESIRE to say at the outset that under the title 'Locomotive' I intend to include (if I have the opportunity) not only the Railway Engine, but also some, at least, of the various forms of engines which from time to time have run on ordinary roads; and I further wish to state that, looking at the fact, that even a comparatively superficial knowledge of the engines which are now doing the work of our railways is of much more practical utility than the most intimate acquaintance with the mere history of the locomotive, I propose to devote but a very small portion of the limited time at our disposal to the historical branch of our subject.

Indeed I will, with your permission, dismiss the historical portion with the following few and brief references.

Setting aside sailing chariots, the first locomotive, so far as I am aware, was one to be used on common roads, and was that of Cugnot, actually put to work in the streets of Paris, in the year 1769. A second engine, made in 1771, still exists in the Conservatoire des Arts