Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/397

Rh were made with, the Sussex Portland Cement Company for building a telpher line to carry clay from the clay-pits on Lord Hampden's estate at Glynde, in Sussex, to the Glynde Railway station. While this work was in progress, Prof. Jenkin died, and was succeeded as engineer of the Telpherage Company by Prof. Perry, under whose direction the line was completed. It was put in operation October 17, 1885. The general appearance of the Glynde telpher line is shown in Fig. 1, and the following description of it



is based upon lectures delivered by Prof. Jenkin and Prof. Perry. The structure consists of a line of posts, eighteen feet high and sixty-six feet apart, with cross-heads eight feet long at the top. Instead of a cable, as used in the wire-rope haulage system, it was found better to have round steel rods, three quarters of an inch thick, running from post to post for the buckets, or "skeps," to travel on. The ends of the rods are fastened to cast-iron saddles. As the train of skeps runs on a single rail, a double track, or two lines of rods, can be supported at the two ends of the cross-heads on the single line of posts. As would be expected, these slender rods sag somewhat under the weight of the loaded skeps, but the trains are made of the length either of one span or two spans, so that the part of the train coming up out of the depression is helped on by the weight of the part just going down into it. The sagging makes the mechanical resistance but little more than is experienced in hauling a train of the same weight along a rigid track, while the use of flexible rods enables the road to be built