“What! you mean Mr. Blackett’s third engine?”
“Ay. It used to draw eight or nine truck loads at about a mile an hour, or a little less; but it often got cranky and stood still.”
“Stood still!”
“Ay; we thought she would never stick to the road, so we had a cogged wheel to work into a rack-work rail laid along the track, and somehow she was always getting off the rack-rail.”
“And now you find that the engine is heavy enough herself to grip the rail.”
“Ay, that was Will Hedley’s notion; he’s a viewer at the colliery. And it is a great improvement. Why, that third engine, I say, was a perfect nuisance. Chaps used to sing out to the driver: ‘How do you get on?’”
“‘Get on,’ sez he, ‘I don’t get on; I on’y get off!’”
“It was always goin’ wrong, and horses was always having to be got out to drag it along.”
“How did Hedley find out that a rack-rail was not needful?”
“Well, he had a framework put upon wheels and worked by windlasses which were geared to the wheels. Men were put to work these windlasses which set the wheels going; and, lo and behold, she moved! The wheels, though smooth, kept to the rails, though they were smooth also, and the framework went along without slipping. ‘Crikey!’ says Hedley, ‘no cogged wheels, no chains, no legs for me! We can do without ’em all. Smooth wheels will grip smooth rails.’ And he proved it too by several experiments.”