The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-06 00:00:00

THE TIMBER PRESERVING COMPANY.

The half, yearly meeting of the above company was
held on the 31st ult., at their offices, Whitehall-wharf,
Westminster, when, after reading the report of the
company's operations for the past six months, and
laying before the shareholders a statement of the ac•
counts as prepared by Messrs. Quilter and Ball, a
dividend at the rate of 6 per cent. per annum was de-
clared, the chairman, Mr. George Burge, stating that
their future prospects were most encouraging, and,
from the daily increasing extent of their works, he
had no doubt he should be in a position, at the close
of the next half-year, to meet them with a larger
amount of dividend.

THE GENERAL SYSTEM OF
ATMOSPHERIC TRACTION.
The evils and expense attending the present system
of railway transit have induced a great number of
ingenious men, within the last few years, to devote
themselves perseveringly to the discovery of an
efficient substitute for the locomotive engine—a sub•
stitute which should possess, in a higher degree, the
paramount requisites of safety, certainty of action,
and economy.
So obvious were the errors of the existing system,
and so anxious were engineers to substitute some
other, which might seem to hold out a promise of
amendment, that, on the appearance of Messrs. Clegg
and Sam uda's patent, in 1839, it speedily found ad-
vocates ; and although the principle of atmospheric
traction was new to the world, save as a passing sug-
gestion, and that all knowledge of its working was
entirely theoretical, yet a very brief period of time
was allowed to elapse before it was seen in practical
operation—first, between Dalkey and Kingstown,
then at Croydon, and subsequently upon a large'
scale on the South Devon Railway. - The result of
these adventures is well known to the public.
The Dalkey line, a snug little family investment of
a mile and three-quarters, or thereabouts, is,
I believe, still in operation. The two more ex•
tensive undertakings failed, and were abandoned;
but they were abandoned, and the last especially,
with such precipitation, as to induce a very general
feeling that there was something radically wrong in
the traction principle altogether. And so, indeed,
pro.ctically speaking, and as far as the wants of the
community at large are concerned, there is; but the
evil, or deficiency, does not extend nearly so far as is
supposed ; and, in common justice, it must be ac-
knowledged that the failures already experienced are
more attributable in their completeness to the occur-
rence of an unforeseen succession of unfortunate
accidents, than to the commission of any great error
in judgment, prudence, or engineering skill. What
are the well authenticated facts of the case ? The
new system was adopted, because it seemed to
promise many paramount advantages. It proposed
effectively to keep the trains from running off the line
—to render a collision impossible—to avoid all danger
of accident and annoyance arising from the emission
of sparks and smoke—to attain a higher velocity with
a greater regularity of transit—and to do all these
things at a considerably reduced expense; and prac-
tice has proved the truth of these anticipations in
almost every particular but one—and that the last.
One most formidable item of expenditure in the
working of a railway is involved in the consumption
of fuel; and, in the case now under consideration, the
quantity consumed mainly depended upon two
primary conditions—the mechanical accuracy of the
longitudinal valve employed by the patentees, and the
structure and effective condition of the stationary
engines.

Now, it appears from a variety of observations and
experiments, that the average quantity of coals con-
sumed in a locomotive engine is at the rate of about
81bs., and in a good condensing steam-engine slbs.
per horse-power per hour; while in the stationary
engines of Cornwall the rate of consumption has
been gradually reduced, in many instances, to far
below a quarter of the first-named quantity, or abso-
lutely less than lilt). per horsepower per hour. The
directors of the South Devon Railway, anxious to
approximate to this desirable ratio of practical
economy, determined to spare neither pains nor ex-
pense in the building of their engines. Eight of
these were accorlingly ordered, with an aggregate
power of 800 horses; the greatest care was bestowed
upon the designs, and their construction was entrusted
to the three most eminent manufacturers of the day.
It appears, however, that notwithstanding all this
careful preparation, the working of these machines
disappointed expectation to the utmost possible de-
gree. Their consumption of fuel was most extrava-
gant, and so strangely irregular, that some of them
actually consumed nearly double the quantity of
others.

One would have thought that the very climax of
disaster had been reached. But no! There was
something more to come yet. Experience was still