Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1854-12-07
GREAT RAIL ROAD SPEED.

A paper yas lately read by Judge Meigs, be.
fore q Institute and Farmers Club,
at New d railroad travelling, in
nave, wit hers, admired the progress
made''n velocity on railroads up to even one
hs< nh hour on straight rails, which
hs basi 1he in England. But entertain
view lilroad velocity far beyond any yet
yentured' p be expressed. The Emperor Of Rus
sia nas Fstr tre hrst great sten tou.
dee,awale ultimatum 81 railroad travel. In
'stSa Of cutting . narrow alley through the
eouk nping round everything in the way
of dismlghs Nine--he has cut broad way five
-hundfs lies from St. Petersburgh to Moscow,
s--he has made II the way t,oo hundred feet
wide, 50 that We eng6eer ssee everything that
comes on tne road! =
"SuSh is part of the future the railroad
from point to point mathematical line the
rails ten times stronger that any now used tho
locomotives on wheels of far greater dirmeter,
say twelve or fifteen feet; the gauge of rel
ative breaeth; the signals and times perfectly
settled toe road walled on both sides, during
the transit of trains having the gates Of the
walls all closed. Then, instead Of one hundred
miles an hour, we shall more safely travel three
hundred miles an aenff / will not pretend to
say more--ono hundred seems fast enough; 90
did twenty, o few years ago. and now, on very
straight rails or some straight runs, We do trav-
el sixty miles an hour in this State, and in
England, one hundred miles have been accom-
plished. Mathematical precision and time will
solve this problom--a passage from New York
to San Francisco in ten hours ~
commenting on this the Scientific American
says:
1--WE have no doubt of one hundred milee an
hour being perfectly practicable railroad
speed, by the building ofsach railroads as those
described by the Judge, and this opinion was
expressed in the columns of the Syipnti fe Amer
ican some years ago. Bat three hundred miles
ger hour inclnes us to tho fogy side Of the ques-
ton. This speed would reqnire piston veloc-
ity of three thousand three hundred feet per
minute, of eighteen inch stroke, if the driving
wheels we're twenty feet in circumference,
nearly eight feet iu dameter-whoppers y and
they woald have to make one thousand one hun
dred revolutions per inmate. As the wheels
cannot turn round without steaB,, the query
with US is, the means Of raising the steam nee
essary to perform this feat, as the boiler would
have to eyaporate about a. ton Of water per min
ute-sixty in the hour. So far us it relates to
the final velocity of steam in q vacuum, the
speed of three hundred miles per hour could be
obtained, but how can such quantity of steam
be evaporated in locomotive boiler, in this
space of tine' 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 before our eycs-the flight Of
the swallow, the pigeon, the eagle; but when
we look to the heavenly bodies and calculate the
ewful velocity with which they are unceasingy
wheeled through space, the mind is struck with
solemn awe at the mighty power Of the great
Creator, who has. made huge supiterito rsvolve
once on his axis in ten hours, and through space
at the rate of four thousand six hundred and
eighty-ive miles per hour, or fifteen times the
velocity of locomotive ruuuing at the rate of
three hundred miles an hour"