A practical treatise on coach-building historical and descriptive

by James W. Burgess

It is not so generally known as it should be, that in France, Belgium, Germany, and some other European States, the training of workmen and apprentices receives a great deal of attention, the Governments in these countries considering money and trouble bestowed on such objects to be of national importance. Technical schools in these countries furnish instruction in drawing, modelling, the harmonious arrangement of colours, the application of chemistry to manufactures, metallurgy, and the proper working of metals, the principles and applications of mathematics and mechanics to manufactures, together with much that is strictly technical. In some parts of Germany, before an employer of labour can commence business on his own account, he must prove to competent persons, by the execution of some trial work, that he understands what he undertakes; and, moreover, that he has travelled for three years in foreign countries, working at his trade, to acquire a knowledge of its processes in other countries besides his own. There is doubtless much pedantry in many of the regulations that interfere with the free exercise of trade, but culling the best points of the system there is much good that results. The training of apprentices in most trades in England is very unsatisfactory, and were public attention directed to the matter, after discussing the subject in its different bearings, there might be some good general recommendations circulated relating to the subject.

The carriages of America are so different from our own and from those of Europe, that they require special attention. It is quite possible that in the future their style may greatly influence carriages in all parts. The first noticeable trait in them is lightness, and English coach-builders generally agree that they carry this lightness too far, more especially in their larger carriages. We are supported in this view by the fact, that for some years, these—such as landaus, broughams, and coaches—have been materially modified by European types. The Americans have adopted some of the shapes of Europe, and the European mode of constructing the under-carriages, retaining their own method of making the pole and splinters, as giving greater freedom to the horses.

This principle of allowing the horses greater freedom for action is well worthy of the attention of coach-builders. The manner in which our horses are confined by tight, heavy strapping and traces, by tight pole chains, by bearing reins, and the indiscriminate use of blinkers to the bridles, has been much overdone in England. If a horse with a heavy load and driven fast over slippery roads should stumble, it is most difficult for him to recover himself. He generally falls, and is pushed along by the impetus of the carriage, and is more or less injured in his limbs or nerves by the accident, while it is a matter of great difficulty, if not impossibility, for him to rise again till the harness be unstrapped and the carriage is removed from above him. Our horses are also harnessed too closely to their work in two-wheeled carriages. We have thought only of the ease of turning and moving the vehicle in crowded or narrow ways, without observing the advantage of long shafts over short shafts. If the shafts are considered as levers, by which the horse supports and moves the weight behind him in a two-wheeled cart, it will at once be obvious that although (whilst those levers are parallel with the road) it does not so much signify whether they are long or short, yet the moment they cease to be parallel with the road, when they point upwards, or more particularly when they point downwards, the difference between long and short levers is severely felt by the horse. We can all of us lift a weight or support a weight more easily with a long lever than with a short one, and it is the same with a horse.

Those who have travelled abroad must have noticed the great weights placed upon two-wheeled carts in France and Belgium, and the greater comparative distance the horse is placed from the wheels, and yet he carries his load easily enough, because he does not feel its weight upon his back. Many English drivers seem to have observed this, and try and ease the horse and lessen his chance of stumbling by tipping the shafts up in front; but in this way the horse is made to feel a pressure on the under part of his body, which certainly will not improve his health. It is very probable that in future years public opinion will be in favour of longer shafts and poles. This will also tend to preserve good carriages from the damages they at present suffer from the heat of the horses and the quantity of mud which is thrown by their heels upon the front of the vehicle. The reins will of course have to be longer, but this cannot be of much consequence; the driver of a brougham is farther from the horse than the driver of a mail phaeton, but it is not by any means true that the brougham is any more difficult to drive than the phaeton on that account.

There is another fashion prevalent in this country which is certainly a fallacy, viz. the supposed necessity for the driver to sit nearly upright, which necessitates a deep boot and a clumsy, thick coachman’s cushion. In America, Russia, and parts of Germany, the driver sits low, but places his foot against a bar in front of the footboard; this in their carriages is longer than in ours. Four horses can be driven very well and easily in a low landau, and very powerful-pulling and fast-trotting horses held in with apparent ease. Our coachmen are often in danger of being pulled over by their horses, and certainly when an accident happens in a collision they are easily thrown from the boxes. They do not have the purchase and security that the Russian drivers seem to possess.

One of the greatest novelties introduced by the Americans into the United States is the “buggy,” a name first given in England a hundred years ago to a light two-wheeled cart, carrying one person only, and which we now call a “sulky.”

The Americans have lavished all their ingenuity upon these buggies, and they have arrived at a marvellous perfection of lightness. They are hung upon two elliptical springs. The axles and carriage timber have been reduced to mere thin sticks. The four wheels are made so slender as to resemble a spider’s web. Instead of the circumference of the wheel being composed of a number of felloes, they consist of only two of oak or hickory wood, bent to the shape by steam. The ironwork is very slender and yet composed of many pieces, and in order to reduce the cost these pieces are mostly cast, not forged, of a sort of iron less brittle than our cast iron. The bodies are of light work like what we call cabinet work. The weight of the whole vehicle is so small that one man can easily lift it upon its wheels again if it should be accidentally upset, and two persons of ordinary strength can raise it easily from the ground. The four wheels are of nearly the same height, and the body is suspended centrally between them. There are no futchells; the pole or shafts are attached to the front axletree bed, and the front of the pole is carried by the horses in just the same way that they carry the shafts. The splinter-bar and whipple-trees are attracted to the pole on swivels. Some are made with hoods and some without. The hoods are made so that the leather of the sides can be taken off and rolled up, and the back leather rolled, removed, or fixed at the bottom, a few inches away from the back, the roof remaining as a sun-shade. The leather-work is very thin and of beautifully supple enamelled leather.

The perfection to which this vehicle has been carried is certainly wonderful; and every part that is weak or likely to give way is carefully strengthened. If well made they last a long time without repair. The whole is so slender that it “gives” and recovers at any obstacle. The defect in these carriages in English eyes consists of the difficulty of getting in or out, by reason of the height of the front wheel and its proximity to the hind wheel. It is often necessary to partly lock round the wheel to allow of easy entrance. There is also a tremulous motion on a hard road that is not always agreeable. It is not surprising, however, that with the great advantages of extreme lightness, ease, and durability, and with lofty wheels, these vehicles travel with facility over very rough roads, as there is a great demand for them in our colonies. It must be remembered that the price is small, much less than the price of our gigs and four-wheeled dog-carts. This cheapness is attained by making large numbers to the same pattern, by the use of cast iron clips, couplings, and stays, and by using machinery in sawing, shaping, grooving, and mortising the timbers, and by the educated dexterity of the American workman, always ready to adopt any improvement. An educated man will make a nimble workman, just as an educated man learns his drill from the military instructor more quickly than a clown; and an educated man finds out the value of machinery and desires to use and improve it. Instead of fearing its rivalry he welcomes it; he remembers that all tools, even the saw and the hammer, are machines, and that the hand that guides these tools is but a perfect machine obeying the guidance of the brain more quickly and in a more varied manner than any man-made machine. The American workman, therefore, uses machines more and more.

In England machinery for wood shaping is used at Derby, Newcastle, Nottingham, Worcester, and other towns, and in Paris some very good machinery is at work in coach factories. In London it is chiefly confined to patent wheel factories, a few steam-driven saws, patent mills worked by hand, and drilling and punching machines. But until the use of machinery is more generally adopted in London, it is probable that the trade of building carriages for export will drift more and more to the provinces and the continent. The saving effected by machinery in cab and omnibus building would be great, because the patterns vary so little, and all the other parts of a carriage would correspond with another, and counter-change when repairs were needed.

The coach-builders of the future will look to steam and hand machinery as their great assistance in cheapening the cost of first-rate carriages, in multiplying them for the probable increased demand, and also to build carriages more speedily. It now takes from two to three months to build a brougham, of which at least five weeks are consumed simply in the wood and ironwork, a period which by the use of machinery might easily be shortened.