is a room similarly fitted up for the engine cleaners. Although these
works are fraught with many dangers, it is rarely that any serious
casualty occurs. District Loco. Superintendent, Albany Richardson,
Esq.; Assistant Superintendent, Mr. John Richardson.
There are two gauges known as the Stephenson or narrow gauge, 4-ft.
8½-in., and the broad gauge 7 feet between the rails introduced by the
younger Brunel on the Great Western Railway.
The locomotives on the Brighton and South-Coast Railway are constructed
for the narrow gauge. The "Kensington," No. 205, belonging to the
London, Brighton and South-Coast Railway Company, is a four-wheel
coupled engine, designed by W. Stroudley, Esq., Locomotive Engineer.
Diameter of cylinders, 17 inches; stroke, 24 inches; diameter of
driving and trailing wheels, 6 feet 6 inches; leading wheel, 4 feet 3
inches; wheel base, 16 feet 3 inches; number of tubes, 260; diameter of
ditto outside, 1½ inch; length of ditto, 10 feet 11¾ inches; area of
fire-grate, 10.25 square feet; pressure of steam, 140 lbs. per square
inch; tube surface, 1,125 square feet; fire-box surface, 112 feet;
total surface, 1,237. The total weight of this class of engine and
tender when loaded is about 50 tons, and will convey a load of 236 tons
at a speed of 40 miles an hour.
This class of engine was constructed for running the express traffic,
which in the season is very heavy on this line. Cost of engine about
£2500.
"A pint of water is converted into two hundred and sixteen gallons
of steam by two ounces of coal, and has sufficient power to lift
thirty-seven tons; the steam thus produced has a pressure equal to that
of common atmospheric air. By allowing it to expand, by virtue of its
elasticity a further mechanical force may be obtained, at least equal
in amount to the former. A pint of water therefore, and two ounces of
coal are thus rendered capable of raising seventy-four tons a foot
high. Two hundred feet of steam can be condensed in one second by four
ounces of water, and their expansive power reduced to one-fifth."
The first person who sought to apply the expansive force of steam as
a motive power to machinery was an Egyptian, Hero of Alexandria, who
lived about 15 years before Christ.
In the year 1543, Basco de Garay, a Spanish captain, astonished the
world by asserting that he would propel a vessel without sails or oars.
The Emperor Charles V. ordered the experiment to be made, and on the
17th of June a vessel called the "Trinity," of 200 tons burden was
moved by wheels turned by steam at the rate of two leagues in three
hours. To Spain belongs the honour of having invented the first steam
vessel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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