IMPROVEMENTS IN LOCOMOTION AND IN THE APPARATUS TO BE EMPLOYED THEREIN
Year: 1870

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Bewicke Blackburn at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
15th February 1870.
I, BEWICKE BLACKBURN, of the Adelphi, in the City of Westminster,
Gentleman, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for
"IMPROVEMENTS IN LOCOMOTION AND IN THE APPARATUS TO BE EMPLOYED THEREIN,'
to be as follows:-
"
In carrying out my improvements in locomotion the wheels are
mounted in stationary bearings arranged at distances along the line and
rotate therein while the rails are attached to the carriages. The earth-
works and masonry, are the same as for railways of the ordinary kind,
but instead of rails pairs of fly wheels are mounted at, say, every 25.
feet along the whole length of the line. The fly wheels are driven con-
tinuously during the whole day at a speed of about 100 miles an hour
by small turbines fed with water by a main laid between the up and
down lines, and charged by a pumping engine fixed at about every mile.
The carriages may be, say, 100 feet long, and are built in the form of
tubular girders. They are made of thin sheet steel with rails or flanges
attached to their sides by elastic attachments. The rails take their

page_text: bearings on the periphery of the fly wheels, by the revolution and
momentum of which the carriages are carried forward at the rate, on
level ground, of rather less than 100 miles an hour. The carriages may
succeed each other every five minutes, and in that interval the fly wheels
will recover their full momentum ready to carry forward the next
carriage. In the distance, say, of from London to Manchester, only one
stopping station is proposed, namely, near Birmingham; but at every
eighth mile there will be a telegraph station to work the block system,
so that no carriage can pass a station till the preceding carriage has
cleared the forward station. The carriages would come to a stand at
every station without the action of the guard unless the station men
lower a lengthened platform always kept standing slightly above the top
of the fly wheels, on to which platform the carriage would slide and
come to a stand unless the platform has been previously lowered. It
will be seen that an important feature of the system is, that a large store
of force at a very high velocity is accumulated for intermittent use by
the continuous application of a comparatively minute power generated
under circumstances the most favorable to its economical production
both in respect to the amount of fuel and the wear of the plant. The
turbines (though their useful effect is about 40 per cent. below the
actual power expended) compensate for the loss in such a case as this
by the convenience and directness with which they at once convert slow
motion into the highest velocities, and also by the well proved fact that
they continue to run for years without derangement or repair. Another
important feature is, that the amount of power can be exactly propor-
tioned to the gradient, and the additional velocity required on an ascent
is to a large extent balanced by the diminished velocity which will be
given on the descent. If a pumping engine should be disabled the two
adjacent engines would at once take up its work and continue to drive
the turbines though at a diminished speed. If a turbine should fail the
impetus of the carriage would be sufficient to pass it. But the most
important point of all is the very high degree of velocity attainable by
the use of the turbines. They could indeed be more readily applied to
drive the fly wheels at 2000 revolutions a minute than at the proposed
rate of 700.