IMPROVEMENTS IN RAILWAY CARRIAGES
Year: 1871

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Edward Augustus Waller at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents; with his Petition, on
the 22nd March 1871:
°
I, EDWARD AUGUSTUS WALLER; of St. Clement's House; Clement's
Lane, in the City of London; Civil Engineer, do hereby declare the
nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN RAILWAY CARRIAGES;"
to be as follows:-
This Invention consists of certain novel & improved mechanical
arrangements and combinations constituting a railway carriage by which
in case of a collision taking place or of a tyre being broken the liability
of injury happening to the passengers is greatly diminished, änd the
following is an example of the manner of constructing a carriage
according to this Invention; that is to say:-I take railway carriages
such as they exist at present; and I cover the ends of them with india-
rubber one inch thick: I cover this over with sheet iron h inch in
thickness, and on this sheet iron I place 14 or more india-rubber sockets;
ths

page_text: each one foot square and one inch in thickness, to receive an equal
number of spiral flat steel springs of about two feet in length when not
compressed. The outside extremity of these springs is again covered
with india-rubber sockets similar to those already described, and these
sockets are covered with sheet-iron plates of their own surface. These
plates, forming, so to say, the heads of the springs, are bound together
both transversally & perpendicularly by flat iron or steel springs, and
the whole surface is covered over with india-rubber ½ inch thick, or
some similar material. I strengthen the roofs of the carriages by iron
trusses running from end to end, and the india-rubber and sheet-iron
coatings are riveted to these trusses, so that no shock can come on the
superstructure of the carriage until these trusses have given way. In
this way, instead of relying solely on two pairs of buffers, each one foot
in diameter, and giving in all a surface of about 4 square feet (putting
aside that in the event of these buffers jumping over and not meeting
one another they become so many instruments of destruction), I trans-
form the whole end of each carriage into a buffer having a surface of
from 42 to 49 square feet. Carriages constructed in this way, when
coupled, touch one another on a surface of not less than 30 square feet,
the springs being then reduced to one foot nine inches in length, and a
whole train becomes a solid but flexible mass, so that it is impossible for
one buffer not to act upon the other. It will be remarked that I never
have two hard surfaces touching each other, which is an important
feature in my
Invention.
f
Another important feature in this Invention consists in the fact, that
as all the carriages of a train so constructed support one another, the
fact of a tyre breaking or a wheel becoming disabled would not have
any important effect on the progress of the train; in fact, a train
composed of, say 10 carriages, having 4 wheels each, constructed &
coupled according to my Invention, may, for all practical purposes, be
considered 'as one carriage having 40 wheels, and the defect of one of
these wheels would not affect the other 39. The continuity of a train
of carriages such as I propose will avoid the shock on the framework of
the carriages at starting and stopping, which is the cause at present
of so much wear & tear.
Now I would here remark that I do not intend to limit or confine
myself to the use of the materials and dimensious stated in the above

page_text: Specification; I may vary both the materials and their dimensions. I
may replace the springs by pistons of compressed air or otherwise, so
long as the principle of my Invention is adopted, which is providing
large compressible bodies as shields or buffers for the ends of railway
carriages.