Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/125



John Farey, Esq. 10 August, 1831. it is also to be understood, that the Engines must be suitably proportioned for attaining quick speed, because Engines, which are only adapted for slow motion do not work to so great an advantage when they are urged to work quick as when they are worked at or below the speed which the proportions of their parts are adapted to move with; nevertheless, that extra expence of going quick by Steam power will be but small, and nothing like the increased cost of travelling quick with horses; for horses have only a limited speed at which they can travel, if they have no load to carry or drag after them, the whole of their muscular strength being then required to advance the weight of their own bodies; the speed with which Stage Coaches now travel, approaches so near to the speed with which the horses could travel without any load, that their force of draught becomes very small. In all cases, horses lose force of draught in a much greater proportion than they gain speed, and hence the work they do becomes more expensive as they go quicker. The quickest stage-coaches travelling is now at the rate of eleven miles an hour, and that appears to be very near to the utmost limits which nature has prescribed for animal exertion; for those horses require renewal of the whole stock every two or three years. This is a comparison of Steam power and horse labour, during the time that each is actually in operation, but the real difference between the performance of a Steam Engine and that of a set of horses will be found to be very great, when it is considered, that by having one spare Steam Coach for every two or three which are on the road, those Coaches can travel continually all the year round, during fourteen or fifteen hours in every twenty-four, without any intermission except stopping for one or two minutes to take in water at every stage of about seven or eight miles; and thus each Steam Coach can travel 140 or 150 miles a day; whereas a set of four stage-coach horses can only work during seven hours and a half out of every twenty-four hours, or each horse can run fifteen miles a day, and that exertion wears them out very A cart-horse, travelling at the rate of two