Court Opinion

ID: 9812193
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:37:40.487327+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:24:27.244253
License: Public Domain

*231ClaRK, C. J.,
concurring. Eires set by locomotives are so disastrous that all reasonable means should be used to prevent them. The cut of a locomotive used in Williams v. Railroad, 130 N. C., at page 125, has been very useful to the profession and the Court in the trial of actions for damages for fires alleged to have been caused by sparks thrown out by locomotive engines. It may be useful and therefore not inappropriate in a concurring opinion in this ease (in which the spark-arrester was taken off because with it the engine did not steam well), to add to the cut used in 130 N. C., lit supra, the following description and cut of a successful device used on several European railroads to prevent fires being caused from locomotive sparks, taken from an official government publication. U. S. Consular Reports, 1904, p. 102.

“The device consists of a series of three grates set one above another in a square iron or steel frame of such size and form as to fit into the smoke chamber of the locomotive. The arrangement of the three tiers of grate bars is shown by the illustration below. Each bar is about two inches wide by one-tenth of an inch thick, and is ingeniously set into the frame so as to be held in place against any shock or pressure and at the same time to be free to expand or contract with changing temperatures. As shown by the diagram the middle tier or grate contains ■ twice as many bars as the top and bottom tiers, and the arrangement of bars and spaces is such that while a free passage is secured for the gases of combustion no spark or ember more than one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness can escape, and these are so small that they are self-extinguished within a few feet after escaping into the open *232air and cause no danger. This ingenious arrangement of the bars, together with the readiness with which they expand and contract under varying temperatures, acts to dislodge the adhering particles and prevents the arrester from becoming clogged, at the same time permitting a draft so open and free that the steaming capacity of the engine is said to be visibly greáter than with any other type of spark-catcher heretofore used.”
It is there said that this design has solved the problem which “has been to devise a metallic network fine enough in mesh to effectively sift the glowing sparks from the blast of a locomotive without so obstructing the draft as to compromise its steaming capacity. Hitherto the bars or filaments of net-work spark-arresters have been mainly round and fixed in place — conditions which always entail more or less danger of choking and clogging whenever the space between bars or meshes is small enough to really prevent the escape of sparks and glowing embers of dangerous size.”
This device occupies the space E E E in the cut in 130 N. C., at p. 125, but instead of being a flat mesh, as there used, it consists of three tiers or sets of bars, each two inches deep by one-tenth of an inch thick, making a total thickness of six inches through which the sparks must pass, with such distance between the bars as prevent, but without clogging, the passage of any cinders more than one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness.
MoNtgomeby, J., did not sit on the hearing of this case.