Opposite the Western gate a site has been chosen for the erection of a Chapel-of-Ease to St. Mary's.
At the angle facing the South-western gate two stately mansions have recently been erected contiguous to each other, called Lancaster Tower and Strathedon House.
The two Circular Engine sheds, about 90 yards in diameter, belonging to the London, Brighton and South-Coast Railway Company, adjacent to the East-end of the Park, Victoria Road, built about seven years since, show a marked difference to the small wooden shed they erected some eighteen years ago when they had convenience for only four engines. The present sheds are very soundly built, and can accommodate 56 engines which work from the end of the line, there being 63 engines at work when there is no extra traffic, which is not very often the case. The locomotive staff numbers upwards of 300 hands, the major part being drivers, firemen, and cleaners, who muster 200. They have every facility for doing work required in a prompt manner. There is an engine-hoist which will lift an engine of forty or more tons in a very short time. The break-down van stands in one of the sheds ready at a moment's notice for any casualty that might happen. This is fitted up with hydraulic apparatus and every appliance for getting engines and other vehicles on the line quickly. The method of coaling engines is very good. Half-ton trolleys are loaded out of the trucks of coal, which can be moved with ease by one man on the iron-plated coal stage, from which it is shot on the tender of the engine; so that one man can in a few minutes put one or two tons of coal on a tender. Three hundred tons of coal are kept in stock, and the weekly consumption is about five hundred tons. The sheds are remarkably clean, being constantly whitewashed, and the engines, which are kept clean and fresh painted, to use a figurative expression, are perfect pictures. The passenger engines are a light brown color and the goods engines are a dark green. The offices attached to the sheds are at the entrance in one of the railway arches, and suit in every way the requirements of the place, and when inside one would hardly think it was only a railway arch. Other arches have been fitted up as work-shops for the mechanics, and another arch is entirely appropriated for the stores. Also an arch has been utilized so as to form a comfortable mess-room for enginemen and firemen, with cooking apparatus, lockers, and lavatory; adjoining which is a room similarly fitted up for the engine cleaners. Although these works are fraught with many dangers, it is rarely that any serious casualty occurs. District Loco. Superintendent, Albany Richardson, Esq.; Assistant Superintendent, Mr. John Richardson.
There are two gauges known as the Stephenson or narrow gauge, 4-ft. 8½-in., and the broad gauge 7 feet between the rails introduced by the younger Brunel on the Great Western Railway.
The locomotives on the Brighton and South-Coast Railway are constructed for the narrow gauge. The "Kensington," No. 205, belonging to the London, Brighton and South-Coast Railway Company, is a four-wheel coupled engine, designed by W. Stroudley, Esq., Locomotive Engineer. Diameter of cylinders, 17 inches; stroke, 24 inches; diameter of driving and trailing wheels, 6 feet 6 inches; leading wheel, 4 feet 3 inches; wheel base, 16 feet 3 inches; number of tubes, 260; diameter of ditto outside, 1½ inch; length of ditto, 10 feet 11¾ inches; area of fire-grate, 10.25 square feet; pressure of steam, 140 lbs. per square inch; tube surface, 1,125 square feet; fire-box surface, 112 feet; total surface, 1,237. The total weight of this class of engine and tender when loaded is about 50 tons, and will convey a load of 236 tons at a speed of 40 miles an hour.
This class of engine was constructed for running the express traffic, which in the season is very heavy on this line. Cost of engine about £2500.
"A pint of water is converted into two hundred and sixteen gallons of steam by two ounces of coal, and has sufficient power to lift thirty-seven tons; the steam thus produced has a pressure equal to that of common atmospheric air. By allowing it to expand, by virtue of its elasticity a further mechanical force may be obtained, at least equal in amount to the former. A pint of water therefore, and two ounces of coal are thus rendered capable of raising seventy-four tons a foot high. Two hundred feet of steam can be condensed in one second by four ounces of water, and their expansive power reduced to one-fifth."
The first person who sought to apply the expansive force of steam as a motive power to machinery was an Egyptian, Hero of Alexandria, who lived about 15 years before Christ.
In the year 1543, Basco de Garay, a Spanish captain, astonished the world by asserting that he would propel a vessel without sails or oars. The Emperor Charles V. ordered the experiment to be made, and on the 17th of June a vessel called the "Trinity," of 200 tons burden was moved by wheels turned by steam at the rate of two leagues in three hours. To Spain belongs the honour of having invented the first steam vessel.