Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1879 — English and American Locomotives. [ARTICLE]

English and American Locomotives.

The Englishman seems never to be able to escape the influence of his surroundings. Though he occupies a part of every continent, his methods are seldom continental. This is aptly illustrated in his railroad building. His island is small and densely populated, his roads short, and the traffic heavy. Naturally the roads are of the best. Every valley is by viaducts or bridges, every hill pinfeed with deep outs or costly tunnels. ’She early railroad men had an impression that a railroad must be as nearly straight as possible, and as level as labor and money could make it. Later English builders followed these ideas closely, and the final result is magnificent in every sense. The roads are the best known, and make fit ways for the splendid engines designed to run upon them. But all this is insular. When the Englishman tried continental railroading, as in Canada and in Australia, he built on insular plans, and the result has not been wholly happy. It is to the American we must turn to learn what aie the requirements of the modern railway, and to get some suggestion of its future. More than this, the moment the English locomotive is taken from its island line it exhibits defects and a certain want of pliability that completely unfit it for a continental railway. But, if the English road and the English engine are the best in the world, why are they not the best for the world ? Simply because they do not pay. There can be no higher reason than this. Anything that does not pay is useless, because it does not meet a human want." The excuse of the railroad and its train is that it moves men and things cheaply. The cost of any operation is the measure of its value to human beings, and, if the road does not pay, of what good is it? Now a railway, to be cheap, must follow the face of the country. That is, the line must go up and down hill, pass around abrupt curves, according to the lay of the land, and without much attempt at a straight line or level bed. It is upon tills idea that American railroads have been built, and all continental lines are likely to be built in the future. If a railroad can thus follow the face of the country, it will not cost so much, there being no high bridges, deep cuts and tunnels. Of course there is a limit in this direction, and even the American engine cannot climb up the side of a house, or turn a right angle in its own length; but within certain broad limits it may bo said that the future locomotive must follow fines that run up hill and down dale, and get round very remarkable corners. This being the case, what of the English locomotive ? Can it travel in safety over crooked lines that wander in astonishing freedom over hill and dale through all the sinuous lines of a winding river valley ? There is no need to say it ought, or it may, for it never did. It has been tried again and again, and the end of all is, the engine is in the ditch, and the unhappy stockholders are clamoring for American engines, or at least engines built on American plans. —Charles Barnard, in Harper’s Magazine'for March.