The Sun.
London, England, 1848-06-27 00:00:00

CUNNINGHAM and CARTER'S NEW
SYSTEM OF RAILWAY.

An entirely new mode of communicating motion to a
train of carriages on an ordinary railway has recently
been perfected by Messrs. Cunningham and Carter, the
extreme simplicity of which, and its economy, and,
general susceptibility of application to all the require-
ments of an extensive system of railway traffic, will
render it extremely serviceable in reducing the expendi-
ture of railway companies, by enabling them to diminish
the costs of production in a degree the extent of which
cannot easily be anticipated, but which will readily be
perceived to be attributable to the novelty of the principle.
A little attention, indeed, to the details of the machine
will suffice to show that its projectors have succeeded in
finding a remedy for the great disadvantages of the
locomotive system, without laying it open to the new
ones which the atmospheric and rope-haulages have as
sumed. In making the same effort Messrs. Cunningham
and Carter have constructed a working model of the
railway at the premises of the water-works, Peak-hill,
Sydenham, where two concentric circular railways, of
about fifteen feet in the extreme diameter, and repre-
senting the up and down main lines, are traversed by
trains of carriages in opposite directions, sufficiently
large for any purpose of experiment. The smoothness
and regularity with which the miniature trains performed
their experimental trips was quite sufficient to satisfy
the mind as to the mechanical practicability of the plan;
and many scientific gentlemen, together with some emi-
nent engineers, have expressed themselves upon its per-
formances accordingly. With a view, however, of ex-
hibiting the machine in the several situations in which a
railway system is required to be effective, the patentees
have undertaken the construction of a second and larger
model, which is now nearly completed. This work is
going forward on the same premises, and will be 140
leet in length, representing the tortuous course of a
railway as affected by curves and gradients, and
the applicability of the system in working branch
lines, deviations, crossings, and sidings by the
ordinary process of turning the " switches," as-
•isted by the peculiar resources of the proposed
plan. It must be understood, in the first place, that the
patent of these gentlemen does not contemplate any
alteration in the mode of forming the roadway, or of
placing the rails upon them; but that it is in the mode of
working the trains that the new system is proposed. For
this purpose a continuous tube is fixed upon one side of
the railway, which throughout its entire length is closed
against the external atmosphere, not having any valve
or other orifice whatever. At intervals of about ten
miles it will communicate, by means of branch pipes,
with stationary steam-engines, worked sufficiently to
maintain an atmosphere of the same degree of attenua-
tion in its own section of the tube. In every mile of the
railway there will likewise be several pairs of small
pneumatic engines, deriving their motion successively
by communication with the main tube. At the
place where a pair of air-engines occurs, a
rectangular trench will be cut transversely in
the road, beneath the rails. Into this trench an iron
chest will be firmly bedded, and then receive three up-
right arbors or shafts standing, placed in a direction
across the rails, the centre shaft being in the middle of
the space included between the two tramways, and the
other two about three feet beyond the exterior rails ou
either side. Each shaft carries two wheels, or pullies.
The three wheels stand above ground, on the same
horizontal plane with the nave-boxes of the carriages,
and the three lower revolve within the chest, at the
same level with one another, carrying an endless strap,
which causes the roves of the two driving-wheels
above to be discharging in contrary directions.
The work of alternately forming and destroying the
communication between three air-engines and the ex-
hausting tube will be performed by the train itself in
the following manner:—An inverted lever of the first
kind is suspended beneath the roof of the chest, in the
line of the three shafts, and its fulcrum placed in the
centre of that portion of the roof which is included be-
tween the two rails of each pair. Small rods are at-
tached vertically to the extremities of this lever, one of
which forms the piston of what is termed a " starting-
valve," and the other acts indirectly upon the lever of a
" reversing- valve." Above either end of the lever a
small orifice is bored in the top of the chest, and through
these pass piston-rods, terminating in little trucks or
rollers, which, protruding above the surface of the
road, are termed " tappets." The pistons of the
air-engines act by means of a crank rod and
pin on the spokes of the exterior driving-wheels.
To the above it is only necessary now to add, that con-
tinuous rails of wood, coated on three sides with iron,
are attached to the train on either side, at the level of
the nave-boxes, and consequently, when the train stands
at a pair of engines, these rails touch the peripheries of
an exterior and the interior driving wheels. The train
being now supposed to have been brought up to a pair
of air-engines, the moment it enters the rove of a pair
of driving•wheels, the rails at its sides are grasped by
the peripheries. On the train's advancing the smallest
distance beyond the place we supposed it to occupy, an
inverted inclined plane, fixed below the foremost car-
riage, moves over the tappet near the starting-valve.
The air-engines are gradually set into rapid mo-
tion, and, by their piston-rods, the driving-wheels ;
these, by revolving forcibly in contact with the
traction-rails, urge the train through the rove
with a gradual and regular motion, because the
motion of the driving-wheels is itself gradual and regular.
The air-engine, by a simple adjustment, works so long
only as the train is occupied in passing through the
rove, and the train proceeds with the momentum thus
generated to the next pair of air-engines, where this
process is repeated until its journey is concluded.
The above is merely a brief description of the me-
chanism of this novel mode of propelling carriages, as
some peculiarities of the construction and of the work-
ing, highly interesting to a mechanical and scientific
mind, have necessarily been omitted. It may, however,
be mentioned, that the great advantage of the system
consists in its having dispensed with the use of the loco-
motive engine and the valve-tube of the atmospheric.
This will be admitted on all hands to be a great me-
chanical triumph as the destructive effects of locomo-
tives on the rail, and on their own mechanism, involve
an enormous outlay for first cost acd repair. Our limits
preclude us even from adverting to the chief sources
from which economy might be expected by the adoption
of this system; and therefore, in anticipation of the forth-
coming experiments, we shall conclude this article by
stating, for the sake of comparison, that a double line of
railway on this plan might be constructed at 4,0001. per
mile, and afterwards worked at aid. per train per mile,
adopting purposely exaggerated data.