The Albany register. [volume] (Albany, Or.) 1868-18??, 1871-06-24
One RAN Railways.
A TRAIN RUNNING EASILY AND SAFELY
ON A SINGLE RAIL-.

Much has been said and written about
he respective merits and demerits of
oroad guage and narrow guage railways,
,ut-a railway with no guage at all, and
,nly single rail, is a new feature in
modern enterprise, and, therefore, pos>
,es scs considerable interest to the public
generally. We will endeayor to give our |
readers some idea Of this rather curious |
which owes its origin to the |
busy brain of Monsieur Larmanjat, a |
French civil engineer, who has not only
suggested the idea, but put it into prac-
tical operation in France and other por-
tions of Europe.
THE LARMANJAT THEORY
is this, thar railways as they are now con-
with two rails and the wheels of
the locomotives and cars solidly fastened
to the shafts, are on a wrong principle,
and create resistance in the curves which
might be avoided by establishing the
read with but single rail put in the
plane with the longitudinal axis of the
locomotive and cars. Forty per cent. of
the weight of the engine and tender goes
on the driving wheels, and as the adhe-
sion or friction produced by that weight
between the line of the wheels and the
rails is smaller than it would be on a
macadamized road, it is claimed that the
adhesive power of the engines necessary
to draw the train is only obtained bv
materially increasing their weight, es-
pecialiy when the road has heavy grades.
and It at sixty per cent of that weight is
born by the locomotive, and does DOT in
crease the tractive power due to the ad-
has hn Tn h..11
with to rails, and fastening the locomo-
tive and car wheels to the shafts, Larman-
jat says the same mistake has been made
as if wheel-barrows were constructed
with two parallel wheels pinned to a SIM
gle shaft. His invention works the
driving wheels of the locomotive on q
macadamized road, or oak planSs laid
alongside the rail, which gives him a
tractive power of six or seven times great
er than iron can furnish, and causes the
whole train to run easily aud safely on a
single rail. This rail is of American pat
ern, and is spiked in the usual manner.
but in the middle of the ties,
while the planks alluded to are bolt
ed fast to either end of the ties. For a
turnpike railroad having grade of five
hundred feet, and where the train is to
weigh fifty tons and the locomotive ten,
the ties require to be five feet seven
inches long, and three inches thick. If
on turnpike with the above mentioned
grade the same weight is to be drawn,
and the driving wheels to run ON the
maeadam instead of plank, the rail, in
stead of resting on ties would rest on oak
planks. one foot wide and three inches
thick laid in the same direction as the
rail. The pianks and part OF the rail
would be buried in the ground the rails
weigh about 81 pounds to the square foot,
and the macadam on either side, would
be one foot, vide.
THE LOCOMOTIVE
for our one rail railway has four wheels !,
being placed, the one at the front and
| the other at the rear of the engine, bear
ing on the rail. These give the direc-
ton, and are double han.ed. The other
pair of wheels are placed in traverse
plane, passing on line in front of the
frebox. They run on the oak pianks or
macadam, as the case may be, and are
the driving wheels. By the aid of a
screw ingeniously contrived, tie engin-
eer can incline his machine more or less,
and thus the wheel can be put ON or taken
| from. the driving wheels. The wheels
are not weiged to the shaft, but turn
loosely; they have coiled springs, one
end of which is fixed to the shaft, aud
| the other to the hub of the wheel, SO
that the engine moves only after so Iaany
| revelations, the spring coiling itself t.li
| the tension is equal to the power neses
sary to start the train. By this arrange
/ IL u1
curve, one OF the springs discharges it
self OF all the difference which its wheel
/ has to run greater than the other-so that
/ the strain on the shaft and wheel, 50
troublesome in the two rail system, is
avoided entirely. The directing. wheels
being on pivot, can be turned in any
direction. The cars have only four
wheels, two to run on the rail, and two on
the plank or macadam; and all the
| weight bears on the rail and side wheels,
| the latter being smaller than the derecs-
| ing wheels, and intended only to main
tain the equilibrium
But after all theoriziDg and specula-
ton, the proof of the soundness of pud-
ding is in the eating Of it--and Monsieur
Larmanjat has one rail railway run-
ming between Raney and Montfermeil
near Paris, which Is sa
HAS BEEN IN. SUCCESSFUL. OPERATION
two years. On this railway locomotive
] weighing three tons draws two cars with
twenty passengers in each, up grades
equal to $40 feet in mile and through
curves of 10 feet radius. This sort Of d
railway can be built in France for about
Isl 600 per mile. The locomotives
weigh six and ten tons the former runs
fourteen miles an hour, drawing besides
its own weight thirty>five tons up . grade
Of two feet in hundred, and costs $5,>
| 000i On leve! it would draw 180 tons.
The cars are correspondingly cheap. -.
/ Many practical men believe that the
LarmaUjat system is the true solution Of
the probIeuI Of putting railways on turn
pixies with the grades and curves which
the common highway usually has, and it
is not impossible that thesexperimentw will
soon be tried in this country Should it