Another notable improvement in this line is the splendid vestibule trains, in which the cars are connected to one another by enclosed passages and which at their meeting ends are provided with yieldingly supported door-like frames engaging one another by frictional contact, usually, whereby the shock and rocking of cars are prevented in starting and stopping, and their oscillation reduced to a minimum.
As collisions and accidents cannot always be prevented, car frames are now built in which the frames are trussed, and made of rolled steel plates, angles, and channels, whereby a car body of great resistance to telescoping or crushing is obtained.
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
SHIPS AND SHIP-BUILDING.
“Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home.”
“Ships are but boards,” soliloquised the crafty Shylock, and were this still true, yet this present period has seen wonderful changes in construction.
The high castellated bows and sterns and long prows of The Great Harry, of the seventeenth century, and its successors in the eighteenth, with some moderation of cumbersome matter, gave way to lighter, speedier forms, first appearing in the quick-gliding Yankee clippers, during the first decade of the nineteenth century.
Eminent naval architects have regarded the proportions of Noah’s ark, 300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad and 30 cubits high, in which the length was six times the breadth, and the depth three-fifths of the breadth, as the best combination of the elements of strength, capacity and stability.
Even that most modern mercantile vessel known as the “whale-back” with its nearly flat bottom, vertical sides, arched top or deck, skegged or spoon-shaped at bow and stern, straight deck lines, the upper deck cabins and steering gear raised on hollow turrets, with machinery and cargo in the main hull, has not departed much from the safe rule of proportions of its ancient prototype.