The Hillsdale standard. [volume] (Hillsdale, Mich.) 1851-1909, 1854-11-21
SPEED OF RAILROADS.

Tho Seentific Amerieon publishes the & l.
lowing extract from paper read by George
Mcigs before the Farmers Club of New York,
and adds somc interesting observations OF its
own, as to the possibilities rf rail road speed.
Our readers vii. lnd it worth rcading
II have, 1hoihcrs admired tho progress
made in y on railroads up 10 even l09
miles aaA .freiss' rails which has been
dopc in El<lsnd. Du, entertain views Of
railroad vcloeoy beond any yet vcn,urcd to
be expressed. Tho Emperor of Russia has Ia
ken tho first groat step towards what deem
tho nitimarum Of railroad travel.
"Instead of cutting a nrrrow alley through
the country. or going around everything in tho
way of straight line---he has cut broad way
five miles from ST. Pciersburgh, to Moscow
no has made it all the way tUo hundred feet
vide, so that tho engineer sees every thing that
comes on tho road
"Such is part of the future: the railroad
from point to point mathematical line; the
rail ten times stronger than ~ now used; tho
locomotives on wheels of far greater diameter
say twelve or fifteen feet; tho gnagc Of a rcla
two breadth; tho signals and times perfectly
settled, tho road walled On both sides. during
the transit of the trains having the gates of tho
walls all closed.
"Then, instead of one hundred miles an hour,
| we shall moro safely travel three hundred mites
an hour! | will not pretend to say more--ono
hundred seems fast enough; so did twenty
few years ago; and now on very straight rails
or very straight runs, we 10 travel sixty miles
an hour in this State, and in New England ono
hundred have been accomplished.
"Malhcmatical precision and limo will solro
this problem-n passage from New York to
San Francisco in ten hours"
We havo no doubt of one hundred mics per
hour perfectly practicable railroad speed. by
the building of such railroads as those desert
bed by the Judge, and this opinion we expros
scd in tho columns of tho Scientific american
some years ago. But three hundred miles all
hour inclines US to the fogy side of tho ques-
ton. This speed would require piston veloc :
ity of $500 feet per minute, eighteen inch
stroke. if the driving wheels were twcnty-four
feet in circumference. (nearly eight feet diam
oier-whoppers) and thoy would have to make
! 100 revolutions per minute. AS the wheels
cannot turn ronnd without s,oam, tho query
with US is, the means Of raising the steam nee
essary to perform this foat, es tho boiler would
have to evaporate about ton of water per
minute-sixty in tho hour. So far as it relates
to steam in a vacuum the speed of three hun
| ired miles per hour could be obtained but can
| such quantity Of steam be evaporated in %
locomotive boiler, in this space of time' Judge
Meigs may perhaps be able to answer us
With respect to the velocity of bodies. our ideas
are bounded by what has been performed bo
fore our oyes-the flight of the swallow, tho
pigeon, tho eagle; but when we look to tho
heavens and calculate tho awful velocity with
which they arc increasingly wheeled through
space, tho mind is struck with solemn awe at
tho mighty power of the great Creator, who
has made high Jupiter to rcvolve once on its
axis in ten hours, and through space at the rate
of 1855 miles an hour, of fifteen times the vc-
locity of q locomotive running at tho rate Of
three hunered miles per hour.