No. I. Effect of Railroads on the Prospects of the Iron trade, by " On the Right of Property in, and Piracy of, Railway Projections, by the Philosophical Principles of Heat applied to Domestic Purposes, by " B.F." Fall of Temperature in ascending the Atmosphere, by the Editor Gravesend Railway and Dartford Creek, by " Viator." On the Methods of projecting Railways, forming Companies, and getting Brighton Railways; Mr. Gibbs's Report South-Eastern Dover Line, by "Detector." Philosophical Principles of Heat, &c.-continued from p. 18. London, Salisbury, and Exeter Railway Railroads, by Tyro." . A few Words on Railways, by "Delta." Suggestions on the Practicability of employing Wind as an Auxiliary on Table of the Velocity, Fall due to Gravity, Pressure of the Atmosphere, Tons load of a Train corresponding, Inclination of the Plane, Exertion of Brighton Lines; Editor's Plan for insuring the best Line Mr. Robert Stevenson's Evidence on the Brighton Line Mr. Walter's Evidence on the Capabilities of the Greenwich Line Railway Notices and Intelligence Parliamentary Proceedings on Railways Prices of Shares 158 Mathematical Laws of Railway Transit, Motive Power of Locomotives, Effect of the Weather on the Bite of the Wheels, Force of Traction, by Power of Steam known to the Ancients, by "D." Calculation of Times of Transit on the South-Eastern Dover Line, by Mr. Plan for Preventing Accidents on Railways, by Mr. Thomas Calver Observations on the Explosion of Steam Boilers, by Jacob Perkins, Esq. Parliamentary Proceedings on Private Bills, by "W. C. F." Esq. On the Conversion of Iron into Steel, by William Maugham, Esq. Kent, Essex, and Dartford, and Crayford Railway and Navigation, by Mathematical Laws of Railway Transit, continued, Velocity of Transit, Letter to the Duke of Wellington, on the Rights of the Public and Railway Shareholders, and a Method of Insuring a Cheap and Impartial Decision on Bills for Railways, by the Editor On Locomotives, and Means of Supplying them, by Jacob Perkins, Esq. On Railroads, and Witnesses' Evidence in Parliament respecting Traffic, by Mr. Robert Stevenson's Evidence on the Brighton Line, continued On Levelling with the Barometer, by the Editor Extract from a Private Letter respecting Railways in Germany Some Curious Experiments on Steam, made by Jacob Perkins, Esq. Original Projector of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway On Cutting off Steam at Parts of a Stroke, by John Moore, Esq. English Investments, and Metropolitan Railways, by " B. J." Esq. Grand Mathematico-Railway Discovery, by " Philo Humbug" Mr. Rowley's Artificial Fountains, by J. Binns, Esq. On the Future Improvement in Railways, and Increasing the Power of the St. Petersburgh and Zarskoe-Selo Railway, by Christopher Kreeft, Esq. Scientific and Miscellaneous Intelligence Railway Notices Capital, Cost, Length, Revenue, Expenses, Profit, &c. &c., of Railways Passed during the Session of 1836, by John Thompson, Esq. Origin of the Brighton Railway, and Waterloo Bridge, by the Projector of Mathematical Laws of Railway Transit, concluded, Calculation of Velocities, Generation of Velocities on Inclined Planes, Curves, &c. in Railways, Conical Tires, Centrifugal Force and Raising the Exterior Rail, Power of Centrifugal Force in Curvilinear Motion to overset carriages, by the Editor 401 Lords' New Regulations, concluded Scientific and Miscellaneous Intelligence Progress of Railway Works WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE LIVERPOOL AND SUCH is the ruling passion of the day for locomotives and rail-roads, that, to doubt of their utility is a serious offence; and to speak against their success absolute treason. Happily for me, I have always been too much a friend to steam, to be endangered by the consequences of so unpopular a crime. Neither do I think it matters much how, or upon what we use steam. What we want, is to avail ourselves of the services it can render us in the most economical, and therefore the most profitable way. But we must not here take the word economy in its usual acceptation; for instance, in doing the greatest quantity of work at the least expense. When we apply this term to travelling by steam, it has a higher and more important signification. Time is what we want most to economise. It would be of small advantage indeed, to be able to travel or send goods from one town to another at a low expense, if the time was to be exceedingly prolonged. With diminution of expense, therefore, must be combined an increased rapidity of travelling, and thus the grand obligation which steam has to confer on us, is to abbreviate as much as possible the time of transit between distant places; and thus proportionally lengthen the term of our natural life. In this sense chiefly will it be economical and valuable, though we by no means disregard that which may properly be called the constant quantity of human nature-the love of our pockets. Probably of all the inventions to curtail time in travelling, that of rail-roads bids fair to be the most successful, and the most capable of farther improvement. Other methods may excel it in enabling us to go this way or that as we please, and in initial cost; but as to safety, comfort, and celerity of travelling between given points, I feel no hesitation in saying, from what I have myself seen, that no method hitherto proposed, can equal that of a well-constructed rail-road. There is not, therefore, in my opinion, any doubt but that railroads will long hold a pre-eminence, and hence be a safe and stable investment for capital. Improvements in stage coach travelling, have certainly gone on very rapidly of late. It is not very many years, since men used to jog on at the rate of about five miles an hour between London and Bristol, in certain six or eight wheeled coaches, which were humorously styled "Fromont's Wagons." And within a very few years there did, if it does not now, exist a two-horse coach, which took I believe three or four days to travel from the one city to the other. What would some of the gentlemen who used to patronize these conveyances, say to a coach starting from London or Manchester at a little before five in the morning, and reaching the other town, 186 miles distant, by eleven at night? What would they, who used to think ten minutes or a quarter of an hour to change horses, and an hour for dinner, unnecessary haste; now think of seventy seconds or less for the former, and ten or fifteen minutes for the latter? Our sailors themselves, would hear with astonishment a "lubberly" stage coachman talking of the difference of longitude of the places through which he passes, and demanding a deduction of nine minutes on his arrival in London, for the difference of longitude "in his run " from Manchester; yet such is actually the case. But if nine minutes be of importance in a run of eighteen hours, surely it will be of much more, in a run of only some five or six hours, when we come to have a rail-road. Intelligence will, doubtless keep pace with the improvement in travelling; it will all go on with a railway speed. In a few years, I expect to hear even the stokers of the engines, whose knowledge now, scarcely reaches beyond the distinguishing of a piece of coke from a clinker, talking as glibly of longitude as our men of science at present do. To some old commodore's wife, whose information has not kept pace with her years, and who, on arriving at Plymouth, complains that she is seventeen minutes behind the time, I fancy I hear some porter explaining to her the cause: "No ma'am, it is not our fault nor your watch's; it is all owing to the difference of longitude. We have travelled with the sun westward, and by your watch appeared to lose the seventeen minutes of time; if we had travelled eastward against it, we should have appeared to gain seventeen minutes, and you would then think you had arrived seventeen minutes too early." I may possibly be excused for relating the following incident, which sets the "march of improvement" in travelling in an interesting light. Some years since, while I was in conversation with a gentleman on one of the coaches, he mentioned to me, that a few days before he had been comparing |