The Sun.
London, England, 1846-01-29 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSEV,A,,Y

MORNING,--JANUARY 29, 1846.

person said what he did not say, and gave opinions which
he never entertained, and then to attack such statements
and opinions as if they had been really his. I seldom read
the numerous papers on railway subjects, having better
opportunities of judging of points connected with my
own official duties than the editors or correspondents of
those papers are able to afford ; but the editor of one
of them usually sends me the articles that he writes
against me, and, on receiving his last number, I
found, after perusing a few lines of it, that he grounded
an attack on me upon the erroneous passages in the
newspaper report of my evidence at Thetford and at
Littlebury, on which I laid aside his paper, as I have
done on former occasions, without reading any more of
it, for such attacks are to me a matter of perfect indif-
ference. After this I found that one of your corres-
dondents, who signs himself " 5.," has written
a letter, published in your paper of the 15th inst., headed
" General Paisley on Railway Accidents,"in which, under
an erroneous impression that I am a partizan of the
broad gauge, he controverts my supposed opinions,
but with more temper and moderation than my other
assailants. If he had known my real sentiments, he
might have saved himself the trouble, not of writing
the letter to you, in which he discusses the subject
of long and short boilers, but of mixing up my
name with it, as far as the gauges are concerned. 51y
opinion on that question has always been, that the narrow
gauge is too narrow, and the broad gauge much wider
than was absolutely necessary ; and, therefore, I recom-
mended in March, 1843, that a gauge of 5 feet 3 inches
should be established for all railways in Ireland, in pre-
ference either to the narrow gauge of the English rail.
ways (4 feet 8f inches), adopted on the Dublin and
Kingstown railway, or to the broad gauge of the
Ulster Railway (6 feet 2 inches), which, though ten
inches narrower than that of the Great Western
Railway, I considered wider than was absolutely
necessary, My opinions on this head have not
been altered since, and on being examined by Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Sir Frederick Smith, Mr. Airy, Astro-
nomer-Royal, and Professor Barlow, the Commissioners
appointed to inquire into the gauge of railways on the
18th ult., before the accident on the Norfolk Railway
occurred, I stated that the extent of Railway lines in
England would certainly be doubled, and might probably
be trebled, in the course of some years, and therefore
thought that both the present wide gauge of the Great
Western Railway, and its extension and branches, as
well as the narrow guage of the other railways in Great
Britain, ought to be abolished, and the .5 feet 3 inches
gauge adopted instead.

opportunity of travelling some stages on that engine ;
but this he did of his own accord, and not by my desire,
as your reporter stated through mistake. The experi-
ment, however, can easily be tried on a descending gra-
dient. Let an engine with its tender, drawing a train of
coal waggons, be set in motion. lam ready to go
with Mr. Bidder on any of the narrow gauge engines,
except :hose of the long-boiler pattern, at full speed,
down an incline, and to shut off the steam suddenly,
and to cast off the train immediately afterwards by dis-
engaging a pin, as is done by the auxiliary engines of
heavy down-trains of the London and Birmingham Rail-
way Company, near their Camden-town station, several
times every day, and I will prove to him that the effect
is null. Should he have doubts as to the safety of the
experiment, he may ride in a carriage in the rear, whilst
I stand on the engine, in as much confidence of the
safety of my position as he can have of his own. But I
shall not argue the point with him in writing. He has
given his opinion, and I have given mine; and his time
may be be:ter employed than in paper warfare, which
can prove nothing.
Having always had occasion to approve of the railway
works actually lesigned and executed by Mr. Bidder,
though nominally under Mr. Robert Stephenson, as
en-
gineer-in-chief, in which he has displayed equal skill and
judgment, and especially in his iron swing-bride over
the river Wensum, near Norwich, which does him very
great credit, it was a matter of regret to me, that I could
not conscientiously do otherwise than entirely dissent
from Mr. Bidder's opinion in respect to the cause of the
accident on the Norfolk Railway.
Having now explained my evidence in a clearer
manner than was done in the report made in the morn•
ing papers of the 14th instant, before alluded t0,.1 must
notice some errors as to fact in that report; after having
corrected which, the remainder of it will be quite accu-
rate. In the first place, I did not say that the flangei of
Messrs. Stotherd and Slaughter's engines were deficient
in depth; on the contrary, they had the usual depth of
1* inch, which I stated as being quite sufficient; but
they were set nearly at right angles to the tread of the
wheel, contrary to the rule followed in all other locomo-
tive engines that I have seen, which is to round off that
angle nearly in the form of a quadrant. Though similar
to Mr. Robert Stephenson'e last pattern in other respects,
the fire-box did not project entirely in the rear as a dead
weight, but had its centre placed over the axle of the
hind wheels, which rendered it necessary to raise the
top of the boiler about nine inches higher, and conse-
quently, though better balanced on their wheels, they
had the disadvantage of being more.top-heavy than Mr.
Stephenson's pattern. The present locomotive engineer
of the Eastern Counties Railway assured me that they
had not only been all provided with new wheels of the
usual form, but that they were much improved since two
of them ran off the rails and overset, the first with ex-
cessive speed down an incline and along a curve, which
terminated fatally; the second on a level and straight
portion of the line, and at very moderate speed, so that
no person was injured. If these engines had been an
exact copy of Mr. Stephenson's pattern, the last-men-
tioned accident would not have taken place.

_ .
The trials between the broad and narrow gauges
made under the inspection of the Gauge Commissioners,
by means of experimental passenger trains and goods
trains, loaded with equal weights, had not then taken
place ; but previously to my being examined by the
Gauge Commissioners, I had been required, in the
course of my duty, to give an opinion whether the
speed of the express trains then running on various
railways might not be dangerous to the public safety.
As I knew from long experience that the oscillation
of a railway carriage was no proof of danger, and its
steadiness not always a proof of safety, I therefore in-
vestigated this subject by travelling on the locomotive
engines of all the express trains in England, which
qffords the only just criterion of safety or of danpr;
and I found that not only the engines of the Great
Western, but those of the narrow gauge lines, such as
the South-Western' the Brighton, Grand Junction, Mid-
land Counties, and other Railway Companies, whether
constructed according to the designs and specifications
of their own locomotive engiacerss, with outside or
inside cylinders, or from the designs of Messrs. Sharp
Brothers, Hawthorn, Fairbairn, and other skilful loco-
motive engine-makers, as well as the new pattern engine
of Mr. Bodiner, were all steady, especially the last, and
consequently all safe ; but when I tried the White Horse
of Kent, one of Mr. Robert Stephenson's last patented
long-boiler engines, on the 18th of September last, I
found that it rolled like a ship at sea when pushed to a
velocity of about 45 miles an hour between London and
Tunbridge, on the Sonth-Eastern Railway, and this
uneasy motion having increased in proportion to the
speed, I came to a conclusion, if an attempt were made
with such engines to rival the speed of the Great
Western express trains, that they would run off the rails
and overset. I have expressed this opinion since to the
Noble President, and to my colleagues, the other officers
of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade, and
to railway officers whom I have met with on duty, not
excepting gentlemen who have been pupils of Mr.
Robert Stephenson, or who are employed on railways
of which he is either the engineer-in-chief or the con-
setting engineer. I have also stated the same opinion
to enginemen in charge of locomotive engines of this
construction, on which I have since travelled, but I
never had occasion, as mentioned in the newspaper re-
port, to tell these men that they were actually in
danger, for they never went down descending gra-
dients at a greater speed than about thirty miles an
hour ; and they never exceeded the speed of 4.5 miles
an hoar on level portions of railway, whilst I was
present. Hence I did not think that the dangerous
character of these engines would ever be practically
proved, because both on the Eastern Counties and Nor-
folk Railways, where they were most used, the time
between the stopping stations of the swiftest trains was
o regulated, that there was no necessity for exceeding
that speed, excepting on the old well-consolidated por-
tion between London and Bishop's Stortford, which I
have travelled over at 45 miles an hour on an engine of
the construction alluded to, but even at that speed it
oscillated a great deal ; when diminished, it became
steady. My former opinion of Mr. Robert Stephenson's
new long boiler engines was favourable, for when I first
travelled on them on the 12th of April, 1844, whilst in-
specting the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway, it was at
rate not exceeding from 30 to 35 miles an hour, at
which they are steady and safe ; nor did I discover any
objection to them on the Gravesend and Rochester Rail-
way, where they are always used at moderate speed,
until I travelled on the White Horse of Kent with a
swift train of the South-Eastern Railway Company, as
before mentioned.

In mentioning the gauge Commissioners, there were
also several inaccuracies in your reporter's account of
my evidence, in consequence of which I was obliged to
write to them to explain, lest they should consider me
wanting in courtesy towards them. In the first place,
being independent of the Board of Trade, they gave no
opinion, as implied in the newspaper account, and sent
no report to the Board, of the accident that occurred to
an experimental train on the Great North of England
Railway on the Ist inst., by a long-boiler engine run
ning off the rails and being overset; for though they
afterwards inquired into it at York, in presence, I pre-
sume, of Mr. Close, Secretary of that Company, the de-
positions of the evidences who came before them on that
occasion were transmitted officially by that gentleman,
together with a report of the accident, as required by Act
of Parliament. On inspecting the engine itself, at Derby,
last week, I found that instead of being an exact copy of
Mr. Robert Stephenson's long-boiler pattern, as I had
supposed at the period of the inquest, it differed from it
in two points; first, in having been made with inside cylin-
ders, in order to do away with the oscillation general'y,
but I think erroneously, ascribed to outside cylinders;
and, secondly, in having an oval boiler in order to obtain
greater sectional area than the narrow gauge admits of
when the cylindrical form is used. Neither of these
alterations can be considered an improvement, as they
both produce the unfavourable effect of rendeting it
necessary to raise the boiler higher than in Mr. Stephen-
son's pattern. It was also erroneously stated by your
reporter, that the gauge Commissioners were in a train
from Bristol to Gloucester, upon the engine of which I
travelled with Mr. M‘Connel, locomotive superintendent
of the Bristol and Birmingham Railway, erroneously
styled Mr. M'Connel, when I first tried the experiment of
shutting off the steam in going at full speed. Moreover,
when I tried the same experiment a second time, by
permission of Mr. Brunel, on the engine of an experi-
mental goods' train, on the Great Western Railway, in
which the Commissioners were travelling from Padding-
ton to Didcot, it had a load of 205 tone only, instead of
2,000 tons, as stated in the newspaper report.
I shall here observe, though it made no part
of my evidence before the coroner's inquest at
Thetford, with which the question of the gauges
had very little to do, that I have drawn an in-
ference from the performances of the experimental
trains of both ; namely, that the narrow gauge has
failed in the most important points of railway travel-
ling, as it has not room between the wheels for a boiler
of sufficient power to obtain that speed, combined with
safety, which the travelling public have a right to ex-
pect, and which the express trains of the Great Western
Railway Company have proved to be perfeefly wee
ticable. This is another argument for abolishing the
narrow gauge and adopting 5 feet 3 inches, as the
standard gauge of all our railways, as that will admit of
a boiler of more than four feet in diameter, which is the
maximum dimension hitherto adopted for the engines of
the Great Western Railway.
To conclude, I hare no doubt that the reporters for
the London morning papers would have given my evi-
dence with perfect accuracy, if the coroner had examined
me in the usual manner, by taking down what I said,
and reading it over again, and asking me whether it was
cornet. But he did not follow this mode, only asking a
few questions, to which I not only replied, but
stated my reasons in full, lest there should be any
misconception of my opinions. In so doing 1 spoke
too rapidly for any person, however well educated and
intelligent, to report accurately, unless •he were an
engineer, who understood the details of locomotive en-
gines and of railway constructions. After my evidence
closed, the coroner read over a brief abstract of it, that
he had made, which I signed, and for which lam re-
sponsible, hut not for the matter contained in the news-
paper reports. Before I quitted the Town-hall, two
reporters, brothers, introduced themselves to me, and
asked me to correct their notes, to which I agreed,
being anxious that my statements and opinions should
be accurately reported in a matter of so much delicacy
and importance. One of them accordingly called on me
afterwards at the Bell Inn, and read over such parts of
his own notes on my evidence as he considered doubtful,
which I corrected wherever he had mistaken my mean-
ing. If he had read over the whole to me, as I sug-
gested, it would have been more satisfactory, for in that
ease no possible mistake could have been made ; but he
assured me that he was confident it was all right, which
I could not help doubting, as he seemed to have taken
hasty notes of the heads of my evidence, trusting to
memory for putting in into form afterwards, in which, if
he had been more successful, I would not have troubled
you with this long letter, which I shall be very much
obliged to you to insert in your columns.—l have the
honour to be, Sir, your most obedient servant,
C. W. PASLEY, Major-General, &c.
London, Jan. 19.

In my evidence before the coroner's inquest, at Thet-
ford, I therefore ascribed the accident party to the im-
prudence of the engineman in running down a long
descending gradient of 1 in 200 at the utmost speed that
his engine could command, and partly to the peculiar
construction of that engine, which I considered unsafe at
a speed exceeding 45 miles an hour ; a speed that was
perfectly unnecessary on any part of that line, but espe-
cially on that portion of it where the accident occurred,
between Harlingroad Station and Thetford, a distance
of only 8 milts, for travelling over which 46 minutes
were allowed.

As I inferred, from a question put to me, that the
jury had an erroneous notion, that the engine to which
this accident occurred, as well as those which ran off the
rails on the Eastern Counties line first near Chesterford,
and afterwards near Littlebeach, were engines built for
the wide gauge, and therefore unsafe for the narrow
gauge, I explained to them that the width between the
wheels on the narrow gauge was too small to admit of
boilers of such large diameter as those of the engines of
the Great Western Railway, which had greater power
than any before used. Mr. Robert Stephenson tried to
get over this difficulty by increasing the length of his
boilers, since hecould not increase their diameter beyond
a certain limit, in hopes that the greater length of the
boilers, and consequently of the tubes, would produce an
additional evaporating surface, and render his long en-
gines superior in power to all the former snort-
boiler engines of the narrow gauge, as well as
to the engines with boilers of larger diameter
of the Great Western. In this attempt, which at
the time appeared very promising, I consider that he has
failed, as I stated in my evidence before the coroner's
inquest ; for his engines with long boilers are by no
means so powerful as those of the Great Western, nor
do I think that they excel in power ; indeed, from my
personal observation, I should say that they are inferior
in power to other engines made for the narrow gauge,
having boilers of moderate length, to which they are
certainly much Inferior in safety; for I have travelled on
the engines alluded to, whether having outside or inside
cylinders, at the rate of 50 miles an hour or upwards ;
and I am of opinion that though certainly inferior to
those of the Great Western Railway in power, they are
perfectly safe at the utmost speed they are capable of at-
taining. Indeed, I have been informed by railway
officers not personally interested in the battle of the
gauges, that one of Messrs. Sharps Brothers' engines
with a light express train, travelled over the wolo dis-
tance of 31 miles, between Manchester and Crewe, in 30
minutes, which must have exceeeed 60 miles an hour
for great part of the way. But when I rode upon the
same engine afterwards, on the 23d ultimo, from Stock-
port towards Crewe, whilst it was drawing a train of
471 tons, in a stiff gale, it only accomplished 10 miles in
13 minutes and 52 seconds, which induced the narrow
gauge party not to employ it in the trial of power and
speed before the gauge commissioners, as they had at
first intended ; but to transfer the scene of action to
York, and to use engines of the long boiler pattern.
The peculiar danger in Mr. Robert Stephenson's long
boiler engines, whether made with outside or inside cy-
linders, is, that, in consequence of their extreme length,
he has placed the axles of all his wheels under :the
boiler, having the fire-box and dome an overhanging
weight in the rear, which was never done before, ex-
cept in the short four-wheeled engines of Mr. Bury's
pattern, on the London and Birmingham Railway, which
I do not consider by any means so good as six avheeled
engines; but in travelling upon one of them by an ex-
press train on the 6th of October last, I found it steady
and safe, in consequence of the tender being screwed up
close to the engine with buffers and springs, which con.
verts the tw3 as it were into an eight-wheeled engine.
I never travelled an a four-wheeled engine at a very great
speed before, but I am informed by locomotive engineers and
enginemen who have, that until this improvement was
adopted, they pitched and rolled like a sailing vessel in
a gale of wind. Probably the same expedient may ren.
der Mr. Stephenson's long-boiler engines also much
steadier, and consequently safer.
In respect to the question put to me by the coroner,
whether shutting off the steam suddenly at high
speed could cause the carriages to run against
the engine with such violence as to knock it off LAUNCH or A STEAM-SHIP.—Yesterday a new steam-
the rails, I explained that a locomotive engine being ship,
considerably heavier than the tender, and at least double p called the Moozauffa, which has been built for the ser-
vice of the East India Company, was launched from the
the weight of any of the carriages of a railway building-yard of Messrs Fletcher at Limehouse. The new
train, and the whole moving, of course, with equal velo- vessel is 246 ft-let in length, and of 1,440 tons burden. She
city whilst connected, I thought that the act of suddenly Is to be propelled by two engines of 400 horse power each,
shutting off the steam from the engine could not possibly manufactured by Messrs. seaward and Co. The Chairman
cause the carriages to press upon it, because having and Directors of the East India Company were present, with
much greater momentum it would retain its speed longer; their ladies, to witness the launch, whichtook place a few
and if the connexion between the engine and tender, and minutes before two o'clock. The ceremony of naming the.
vess3l was performed by Miss Willock, the 0144011er of Sir
the carriages of a train were cast off immediately after
Henry Willock, the Chftirrnah of the East India Company.
—Two magnificent gold
shutting off the Ware, the engine would leave Oft car! Tim EAST 'INDIA COMPANY.
riages behind, and travel to a greater distance than any swords have been manufactured by Messrs. Garrard and Co., of Pan-
-9f them Wore it stopped. If shutting off the steam ton-street, Haymarket, by order of the East India Company. The
suddenly could have any effect, as I found by trial that following are the inscriptions upon them, web Jet!
thwiell_..,:tlfttliciiieciiittl6
ez-
-194 110 t, acpidents like that near Thetford ought to plain the
object of presentation :
P P"nglete
in 'testiniony of their
()emir every .41137 for it is a common practice with en- /;e'iitett fCor.litinantaLAriPtettrSald titinbSian acknowledgment of his un-
ginemen, on preparing to atop, to shut off their steam swerving fidelity and attachment to the British
all at wipe sas I observed that the driver of one of " Presented by the East India Company raGl leanti;
Messrs. §totkefd and Eilwaiglitert* et git}ea while
evening that / rethpio4 froui wetraci,
did,the
grateful recognition of the eminent service? rtteone_e':.77.4a
,byohpiptm
b,s'i. Governor of Peshawur, in co-operatios IS US4
I took the to reilitary eperatieusin .441111Atitail.".