PREFACE. THE LECTURES which form this volume were delivered in 1877 at Chatham to the students of the School of Military Engineering, with the aid of explanatory diagrams and models, which are to a great extent represented by the woodcuts. Those Lectures which relate to Railways were delivered by Mr. J. W. BARRY, and those which relate to Locomotives by Mr. F. J. BRAMWELL, F.R.S. The Lectures given at Chatham are usually printed for private circulation among members of the Corps of Royal Engineers; but it was thought that the publication of the present Lectures in one volume might furnish a useful book for the general public, as well as for those who have passed through the Chatham course of study. It is right to observe that portions of three out of six of Mr. BARRY's Lectures are extracts from his text-book on Railway Appliances, published about a year before the Lectures were delivered. Mr. BARRY found, in pre paring his Lectures, that, it being necessary to describe somewhat tersely the details of a variety of railway appliances, he could not do so better or more succinctly than in the words of his text-book, with such further words of explanation as seemed at the time of lecturing to be necessary. He therefore (with the concurrence of the authorities at Chatham) employed almost the ipsissima verba of his text-book, where they seemed appropriate to the subject-matter; and the result in the present volume is (as has been above stated) that a considerable portion of the descriptive parts of three of Mr. BARRY'S Lectures is more or less a reprint of an already published book. The remainder of Mr. BARRY'S Lectures and the whole of Mr. BRAMWELL'S Lectures are altogether new matter. CONTENTS. Civil and Military Engineering-Railway Conveyance- Water Carriage-Traction-First Cost of Works-Gra- Working Plans and Sections-Drainage-Tunnels-Viaducts -Bridges-Alterations of Roads-Gauge of Railways- Different descriptions of Permanent Way-Sleepers-Longi- tudinal compared with Transverse Sleepers-Chairs-Iron Sleepers-Double-headed Rail-Vignoles Rail-Bridge Rail-Action of Wheels on Rails-Wheels on Curves- |