Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1869 — A Wooden Railway. [ARTICLE]

A Wooden Railway.

A description of the Wooden Railway recently constructed for the Cliffton Ifon Company between Cliffton and the Adirondac mines in New York is given as follows by Mr. C. 0. Myers, late President of the Company: “The rails are of hard maple scantling, 4xo inches, set ori tics, on which are framed slots 6x4. Tim rails, set on edge and keyed in the slots by two wooden wedges driven . against each other, project two inehes above the tics. The rails admit of bonding sufficiently to make the curves. The ties are laid on the oartll and ballasted in the usual manner tq two inehes of the bottom of the rail. It takes feet, board measure, of scantling for a mile, and 1,760 ties at three feet apart. Our road is a very rough one. We have a great deal of trestle work, some of it over thirty feet high, which is vastly more expensive than a level route. The engines used weigh from ten to fourteen tons. The rails will probably last about five or six years. An engine will move about thirty tons of freight at about six. or eight miles an hour, with heavy grades and sliftrp curves. The Company expects to move over the road next year froyi 50,000 to 100,000 tuns of freight.—■ Trains have passed over the road, light, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, but this would not do for freight.”