The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculatorsLardner, Dionysius
History
The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculators
Lardner, Dionysius
Steam-engines -- Early works to 1850
In the attempts which have been made to adapt locomotive engines to
turnpike roads, the projectors have aimed at the accomplishment of two
objects: first, the construction of lighter and smaller engines; and,
secondly, increased power. These ends, it is plain, can only be
attained, with our present knowledge, by the production of steam of
very high temperature and pressure, so that the smallest volume of
steam shall produce the greatest possible mechanical effect. The
methods of propelling the carriage have been in general similar to
that used in the railroad engines, viz. either by cranks placed on the
axles, the wheels being fixed upon the same axles, or by connecting
the piston-rods with the spokes of the wheels, as in the engine
represented in fig. 55. In some carriages, the boiler and moving
power, and the body of the carriage which bears the passengers, are
placed on the same wheels. In others, the engine is placed on a
separate carriage, and draws after it the carriage which transports
the passengers, as is always the case on railways.
The chief difference between the steam engines used on railways, and
those adapted to propel carriages on turnpike roads, is in the
structure of the boiler. In the latter it is essential that, while
the power remains undiminished, the boiler should be lighter and
smaller. The accomplishment of this has been attempted by various
contrivances for so distributing the water, as to expose a
considerable quantity of surface in contact with it to the action of
the fire; spreading it in thin layers on flat plates; inserting it
between plates of iron placed at a small distance asunder, the fire
being admitted between the intermediate plates; dividing it into small
tubes, round which the fire has play; introducing it between the
surfaces of cylinders placed one within another, the fire being
admitted between the alternate cylinders,--have all been resorted to
by different projectors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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