To prevent breakdowns the coach was fitted with idle wheels on each side of the luggage box, with their periphery below the floor, and each as near as was requisite to its respective active wheel. These idle wheels were ready, in case of breakdowns on either side, to catch the falling carriage, and instantly to continue its previous velocity, till the coachman could pull up the horses. The bottom of the luggage box was fourteen inches from the ground, and the idle wheel five or six inches. The following extracts will convey a better idea of the value of the invention. It evidently received a practical trial:-- "Mr. Ward, the coachman, soon found what he might venture, and he took the coach accordingly over such ground as would most assuredly have caused an overturn of any stage-coach with its usual load. This was repeatedly done in the presence of six insides and ten outsides, besides the coachman. Seven parts, perhaps, in ten of the load, which was nearly three tons, lay on the hind wheels. These, by the patentee's directions, were six feet high, and with no dishing, and, as he deemed, sufficiently strong. They did not fail; but it was the opinion of Mr. Thomas Ward, and all the practical men on the spot, that they were not such as could show the principle of safety as to dangerous and side-long ground up to its full extent. As it was, however, any common coach would have gone over at fifty different places during the stage which this coach took without the least symptom of overturning. A linch-pin of one of the hind wheels was taken out. The coach went on, and presently off came the wheel, and down dropped the carriage about seven inches on a small idle wheel, which immediately continued the motion without the least inconvenience to the outside passengers or puzzle to the horses, and the shock was not greater than what was produced by taking over a stone in the night, and, if it had been required, the coach might have been taken five or six miles by means of the idle wheel; and Mr. Thomas Ward very confidently thinks these two circumstances of safety would invariably attend any stage-coach so constructed."