Remarks on the Present System of Road Making: With Observations, Deduced from Practice and Experience, With a View to a Revision of the Existing Laws, and the Introduction of Improvement in the Method of Making, Repairing, and Preserving Roads, and Defending the Road Funds from Misapplication. Seventh Edition, Carefully Revised, With an Appendix, and Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, June 1823, with Extracts from the EvidenceMcAdam, John Loudon
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Remarks on the Present System of Road Making: With Observations, Deduced from Practice and Experience, With a View to a Revision of the Existing Laws, and the Introduction of Improvement in the Method of Making, Repairing, and Preserving Roads, and Defending the Road Funds from Misapplication. Seventh Edition, Carefully Revised, With an Appendix, and Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, June 1823, with Extracts from the Evidence
McAdam, John Loudon
Macadam roads; Roads -- Great Britain
joints with lime-water, which finds its way into the gravel between and
under the stones, and forms the whole into a solid concreted mass. The
purpose served by the lime might also be effectually answered by mixing
a little of the borings or chippings of iron, or small scraps of iron
hoop, with the gravel used in filling up the joints of the paving. The
water would very soon create, an oxide of iron, and form the gravel into
a species of rock. I have seen a piece of rusty hoop taken from under
water, to which the gravel had so connected itself, for four or five
inches round the hoop, as not to be separated without a smart blow of a
hammer. And the cast-iron pipes which are laid in moist gravel soon
exhibit the same tendency.
It has occurred to me, as I stated to the chairman of this honourable
Committee some weeks since, that considerable improvement would be found
from paving the sides of a road, upon which the heavy traffic is great,
in both directions, and leaving the middle for light carriages, the
carmen walking upon the footpaths or sides of the road, would then be
close to their horses, without interrupting, or being in danger of
accidents from light carriages, which is the case when they are driving
upon the middle of the road; and the unpaved part being in the middle or
highest part of the road, would be more easily kept in good repair. I
have prepared a section of a road formed in this way (No. 3 in the
plan), but unless the heavy traffic in both directions is great, one
width (say ten or twelve feet, if very well paved,) will be found
sufficient; and in this case, I think the paving ought to be in the
middle of the road. The width of many of the present roads is, besides,
such, that ten or twelve feet can be spared for paving, while twice that
width would leave too little for the gravelled part. Although the first
cost of paving is so great, I do not think that any other plan can be
adopted to good and so cheap in those places where the materials got in
the neighbourhood are not sufficient for supporting the roads. A coating
of whinstone is, for instance, more durable than the gravel with which
the roads round London are made and repaired; but much less so than
paving; although the freight and carriage of the whinstone, and of the
paving-stones, which form the principal items of the expense, are nearly
the same. Scotch whinstone, or the granite rubble (that is, rough
chippings of granite,) could not, I should think, be delivered into
barges in the river, at less than from 14_s._ to 15_s._ per ton, the
freight alone being from 11_s._ to 12_s._, while the price of Aberdeen
granite, in the same situation, is only from 19_s._ to 21_s._ and 22_s._
Maidstone ragstone in the rubble state, costs about 7_s._ per ton: it is
a limestone, and much less durable than the whin. The carriage from the
river to the road, of all these, is of course the same. Flint, again, is
so much less durable than whin, that it will not bear the expense of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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