Railway Adventures and Anecdotes: Extending over More Than Fifty Years
History
Railway Adventures and Anecdotes: Extending over More Than Fifty Years
Railroads
At the end of it we emerged from
darkness, and, the ground becoming level, we stopped. There is another
tunnel parallel with this, only much wider and longer, for it extends
from the place we had now reached, and where the steam carriages start,
and which is quite out of Liverpool, the whole way under the town, to the
docks. This tunnel is for wagons and other heavy carriages; and as the
engines which are to draw the trains along the railroad do not enter
these tunnels, there is a large building at this entrance which is to be
inhabited by steam engines of a stationary turn of mind, and different
constitution from the travelling ones, which are to propel the trains
through the tunnels to the terminus in the town, without going out of
their houses themselves. The length of the tunnel parallel to the one we
passed through is (I believe) two thousand two hundred yards. I wonder
if you are understanding one word I am saying all this while? We were
introduced to the little engine which was to drag us along the rails.
She (for they make these curious little fire horses all mares) consisted
of a boiler, a stove, a platform, a bench, and behind the bench a barrel
containing enough water to prevent her being thirsty for fifteen
miles,—the whole machine not bigger than a common fire engine. She goes
upon two wheels, which are her feet, and are moved by bright steel legs
called pistons; these are propelled by steam, and in proportion as more
steam is applied to the upper extremities (the hip-joints, I suppose) of
these pistons, the faster they move the wheels; and when it is desirable
to diminish the speed, the steam, which unless suffered to escape would
burst the boiler, evaporates through a safety valve into the air. The
reins, bit, and bridle of this wonderful beast, is a small steel handle,
which applies or withdraws the steam from its legs or pistons, so that a
child might manage it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Railway Adventures and Anecdotes: Extending over More Than Fifty Years — John Shaqi
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