Some important settlements for the use of the patent have lately been made with the company, one of them being with the Western Railroad Association, whose headquarters are at Chicago, which includes the principal western roads. Through this the company receives its royalty on several hundred locomotives. IN SUMMARY It can be stated that Hudson's modification of the Bissell truck is of unquestioned importance, for without the introduction of the equalizer it is doubtful if the 2-wheel pony truck would have been a complete success on American railroads. Bissell's 4-wheel truck was extensively employed, but it did not enjoy the universal popularity of the 2-wheel truck, and in the 1880's was eclipsed by other forms of 4-wheel safety trucks. The Hudson-Bissell pony truck, however, survived in its basic form to recent times, when, in the late 1940's and early 1950's, the last steam locomotives were constructed in this country. 1. Three-point suspension in a 4-2-0 was easily gained--the center plate of the truck and the two bearings of the driving wheel axle. On a 4-4-0 the center plate served as one point, while the fulcrum of each equalizing lever served as the other two points, thus providing the desirable and highly stable 3-point suspension. 2. _American Railroad Journal_, 1853, vol. 9, p. 427. 3. Connecting both truck axles with an equalizing lever so that they acted in sympathy with each other also did much to prevent derailments on rough trackage. 4. Bissell states in the patent specification that inclined planes had been previously applied to railroad car trucks. His claim rested on the application of this device to locomotive trucks. 5. From a sworn statement of G. M. Milligan dated July 2, 1857. This along with letters, petitions, receipts, and other such material quoted in this discussion are from the Patent Office papers housed in the National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter referred to as Patent Office papers). 6. The _Lebanon_ was a 4-4-0, used in freight service, that had been built by the New Jersey Locomotive and Machine Company in December 1855. 7. Letter dated July 2, 1857, from S. L. Moore (Patent Office papers). 8. Statement cited in footnote 5. 9. Letter dated July 11, 1857, Charles Mason to Levi Bissell (Patent Office papers). 10. _American Railway Review_, February 9, 1860, vol. 2, p. 71. 11. U.S. patent 34377, February 11, 1862. 12. Davenport & Bridges, car builders of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1841, obtained a U.S. patent for a swing-beam truck. 13. Gustavus Weissenborn in his authoritative _American Locomotive Engineering and Railway Mechanism_ (New York, 1871, p. 131), stated that when in use the V's soon acquired a polished surface which seemed to defy wear. 14. U.S. patent 42662, May 10, 1864.