A Letter to the Kensington Canal Company on the Substitution of the Pneumatic Railway for the Common Railway by Which They Contemplate Extending Their Line of Conveyance

by John Vallance

On putting this thought into practice, Mr. Houston found the result to be what he had anticipated; and the consequence is, that it is now established by actual and daily practice on the Paisley and Ardrossan Canal, that boats which carry more passengers than (on an average) the locomotive engines, of twenty and thirty horse power each, draw on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, at rates of from 15 to 20 miles an hour, [62] are drawn from Johnstone to Glasgow at the rate of ten miles an how by two horses only; while a velocity so high as 15 miles an hour has been attained: “and this speed was not limited by the labour of the draught, but by the power of speed of the horses.”

In other words, that which the whole of the engineers of the present day had pronounced and demonstrated to be utterly impossible, is now constantly done, several times every day, as a regular passenger-carrying business, on the Paisley and Ardrossan Canal.

And, although the charges for this rate of conveyance are “just one-half, and one-third, of the fares in the Liverpool Railway coaches, the profits are such, as to have induced the proprietors to quadruple the number of boats on the canal;” while the passengers, instead of being boxed up as in the railway coaches, and exposed to the weather, as in the railway “second class carriages,” may either take exercise on the decks, or seat themselves in the long cabins of these passenger-boats.

As this method of rapid canal conveyance is becoming generally adopted, this simple idea of a private gentleman, has not only put to shame the whole of the engineering talent of the present day, but has also possessed the kingdom of nearly 3000 miles of liquid way, which, as if by the stroke of a wand, are raised from the low value of heavy, miry, cross country roads, on which no greater velocity than that of a carrier’s waggon could be attained, to the high value, not merely of the best turnpike-roads, on which the conveyance of persons, at mail-coach and post-chaise rates, can be effected, but also of routes on which two horses can (and daily do) draw one hundred people as fast and (I understand) more easily than four draw sixteen persons on our best mail-coach roads, with less than one-twentieth the wear and tear to the vehicles than takes place as to coaches on roads: on advantage, the money value of which will be inadequately expressed by saying, that as it would cost above thirty thousand pounds per mile to give us roads on which the same power could do the same work, with the same small expense of wear, tear, and current expenses, the simple thought of a private gentleman, whom the engineers of the day would have pronounced a “nobody” in point of scientific authority, has possessed the nation of what it would have cost above one hundred millions sterling to purchase, had said engineers been employed to procure an equal amount of roads, of equally easy draught, and little “wear and tear” for us.

Yet are these gentlemen looked up to as infallible; and allowed to fulminate their anathemas with respect to what they please to pronounce “impossible” as if they were omniscient.

The actual charges the passenger-boats, which now run daily (at the rate of ten miles an hour) between Johnstone and Glasgow, are, one penny per head per mile in the first cabin, and three farthings per head per mile in the second cabin.

How much less these charges are than turnpike-road fares, need not be pointed out: my object being to submit, that equally as our canals having for these three-quarters of a century remained only routes for goods at carriers’-waggon rates, when they might, all along, have been routes for passengers at the highest rates whereat it is possible for horses to go, proves that the engineers of the day knew nothing whatever of a subject which they professed fully and entirely to understand—so may they be equally ignorant of the merits of the proposition which they have so ridiculed and condemned me for presuming to bring forward; and which is, as exactly what they term it, as they demonstrated it to be “impossible” to be conveyed at mail-coach and posting-rates along canals.

Now, great as is the honour due to the engineers of the present day, for thus permitting the accidental thought of a private gentleman to possess the nation (as it were by the stroke of a wand) of 3000 miles of liquid way, over which conveyance may take place at rates of from 10 to 15 miles an hour, for one-tenth the expense, and less than one-tenth of the wear and tear that takes place on roads, after they had demonstrated that no greater rate than two or three miles an hour could be attained on said routes; and, greatly as the canal interest must be indebted to them, for suffering them (the canal interest), in consequence of said demonstration, to lose the millions upon millions they might have received of the public, for conveyance at these rates of 10 or 15 miles an hour, during the three-quarters of a century canals have been in operation among us—equally as the engineers thus deserve public gratitude, do they also deserve it for the manner in which they have suffered the law of motion, by means of which the stage-coachman “swings” his vehicle up the first part of a hill, to remain useless with respect to that improvement of our turnpike-roads which it admits of; and which, though not equal in money-value to the “idea” of Mr. Houston, which has just been described, is yet highly important.

The law itself is “old as the hills;” and, notwithstanding that the advantage taken of it by stage-coachmen when coming to the bottom of a rise, is not quite of such long standing, yet is it old enough to have pointed out an advantageous alteration in the arrangement of all our turnpike roads, had the engineers under whose direction said roads were laid out, but availed themselves of it.

By the table given on page [33] it appears, that if a vehicle be moving on a level with a velocity of 2¾ miles an hour, its momentum will (under the circumstances there stated) carry it up a rise to three inches of perpendicular height: while, if the rate of motion be twice, and four times 2¾ miles an hour—i.e. 5½ and 11 miles—the momentum will carry it up heights of one foot and four feet respectively: and the following table gives the altitudes due to every intermediate mile of rate: