The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and AppliancesClarke, Thomas Curtis
History
The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances
Clarke, Thomas Curtis
Railroads -- United States
Figure 44 is an illustration of a car used for the transportation
of flour on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, while horses were
still used as the motive power. To show how nearly all progress
is a process of evolution, it was asserted, in one of the trials
of the validity of Winans' patent on eight-wheeled cars with two
trucks, that before the date of his patent it was a practice to
load firewood by connecting two such cars with long timbers, which
rested on bolsters attached by kingbolts to the cars. The wood
was loaded on top of these timbers, as shown in Figure 45. An old
car (Fig. 46), which antedated Winans' patent and was used at
the Quincy granite quarries for carrying large blocks of stone,
was also introduced as evidence for the defendants in that suit.
Although Winans was not able to establish the validity of his
patent on eight-wheeled cars with two trucks, he was undoubtedly
one of the first to put it into practical form, and did a great
deal to introduce the system.
[Illustration: Fig. 43.--Early American Car, 1834.]
The progress in the construction of cars has been fully as great
as in that of locomotives. If the old stage-coach bodies on wheels
are compared with a vestibule train of to-day the difference will
be very striking. Most of us who are no longer young can recall
the days when sleeping-cars were unknown, when a journey from an
Eastern city to Chicago meant forty-eight hours or more of sitting
erect in a car with thirty or more passengers, and an atmosphere
which was fetid. Happily those days are past, although the
improvement in the ventilation of cars has been very slow, and is
still very imperfect.
[Illustration: Fig. 44.--Old Car for Carrying Flour on the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account