I removed the whole of the internal parts of the carriage. Through its bottom firm supports, fixed upon the framework below, passed up into the body of the carriage, and supported a long table entirely independent of its motions.
On this table slowly rolled sheets of paper, each a thousand feet long. Several inking pens traced curves on this paper, which expressed the following measures:—
- 1. Force of traction.
- 2. Vertical shake of carriage at its middle.
- 3. Lateral ditto.
- 4. End ditto.
- 5, 6, and 7. The same shakes at the end of the carriage. {321}
- 8. The curve described upon the earth by the centre of the frame of the carriage.
- 9. A chronometer marked half seconds on the paper.
Above two miles of paper were thus covered. These experiments cost me about 300 l., and took up my own time, and that of all the people I was then employing, during five months.
I had previously travelled over most of the railways then existing in this country, in order to make notes of such facts as I could observe during my journeys.
The result of my experiments convinced me that the broad gauge was most convenient and safest for the public. It also enabled me fearlessly to assert that an immense array of experiments which were exhibited round the walls of the meeting-room by those who opposed the Directors were made with an instrument which could not possibly measure the quantities proposed, and that the whole of them were worthless for the present argument. The production of the work of such an instrument could not fail to damage even a good cause.
On the discussion at the general meeting at the London Tavern, I made a statement of my own views, which was admitted at the time to have had considerable influence on the decision of the proprietors. Many years after I met a gentleman who told me he and a few other proprietors holding several thousand proxies came up from Liverpool intending to vote according to the weight of the arguments adduced. He informed me that he and all his friends decided their votes on hearing my statement. He then added, “But for that speech, the broad gauge would not now exist in England.”
〈THE PHILOSOPHER’S ADVENTURES AND ESCAPES BY RAIL.〉
These experiments were not unaccompanied with danger. {322} I sometimes attached my carriage to a public train to convey me to the point where my experiments commenced, and I had frequently to interrupt their course, in order to run on to a siding to avoid a coming train.
I then asked to be allowed to make such experiments during the night when there were no trains; but Brunel told me it was too dangerous to be permitted, and that ballast-waggons, and others, carrying machinery and materials for the construction and completion of the railroad itself, were continually traversing various parts of the line at uncertain hours.