The Ajax was built by Farrington, Hyatt & Co., of the Stockton Iron Works.
This type of dredger can be built for about $12,500, and we are informed can be relied on for a monthly average of 26,000 yards in any material met with in the overflowed lands near Stockton, delivered 50 ft. ashore, at a height of 10 or 12 ft. above the ground line.—Min. and Sci. Press.
Paper, with slight abbreviation, read by Mr. David Gravell, Assoc. M. Inst. C.E., before the Society of Civil and Mechanical Engineers. The paper brings together in a convenient form the sections and salient facts concerning many dams. It was illustrated by numerous diagrams, from which our engravings have been prepared.—The Engineer. Engineering.
THE FLEXIBLE GIRDER TRAMWAY.
This is an ingenious proposition for utilizing a modification of the wire tramway system for overcoming obstacles (while retaining the ordinary wire tramway or any light railway on other parts of the line), made by Mr. Charles Ball, of London.
The flexible girder tramway is an improved system of constructing a modification of the well known and extensively used rope or wire tramway, and it is claimed that it will revolutionize the transport of the products of industrial operations from the place of production to the works or manufactory, railway station, shipping ports, or place of consumption; and that in the result the introduction of the flexible girder tramway will in many cases enable profits to be earned in businesses which have hitherto been unremunerative. It is declared to be at once simple, cheap, durable, and efficient. The improvement consists in the employment, in addition to the usual tram wire (a hempen rope, a wire rope, or a metallic or other rod), along which the load is transported, of a second or suspension wire or rope to which the tram wire is connected by tension rods or their equivalent at intervals between the rigid supports or piers, the object being to diminish or distribute the sagging or deflection of the tram wire, and thus lessen the steepness of the gradients over which the load has to be transported. The combined tram wire, tension rods, suspension wire, and accessories are, for convenience, designated a "flexible girder."