commerce.--_La Nature._

* * * * *




MODERN LOCOMOTIVE PRACTICE.

[Footnote: Paper read before the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society,
April 2, 1884.]

By H. MICHELL WHITLEY, Assoc. M.I.C.E., F.G.S.


A little more than half a century ago, but yet at a period not so far
distant as to be beyond the remembrance of many still living, a
clear-headed North-countryman, on the banks of the Tyne, was working out,
in spite of all opposition, the great problem of adapting the steam engine
to railway locomotion. Buoyed up by an almost prophetic confidence in his
ultimate triumph over all obstacles, he continued to labor to complete an
invention which promised the grandest benefits to mankind. What was
thought of Stephenson and his schemes may be judged by the following
extracts from the _Quarterly Review_ of 1825, in which the introduction of
locomotive traction is condemned in the most pointed manner:

"As to those persons who speculate on making railways general throughout
the kingdom, and superseding every other mode of conveyance by land and
water, we deem them and their visionary schemes unworthy of notice.... The
gross exaggeration of the locomotive steam engine may delude for a time,