Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/157



Mr. Nathaniel Ogle. 17 August, 1831. Have you any peculiar means for rendering explosion impossible?—Yes; the cylinders of which the boilers is composed are so small as to bear a greater pressure than could be produced by the quantity of fire beneath the boiler, and if any one of these cylinders should be injured by violence, or any other way, it would become merely a safety valve to the rest.—We never with the greatest pressure even burst, rent, or injured our boilers, and has not once required cleaning after having been in use twelve months.

Is the connexion between your different cylinders so perfect, that there is no danger of the steam collecting in one particular point of it?—There is a perfectly free communication, and not the least danger to be apprehended.

Have you one or two safety valves?—Two.

At what pressure do you usually work your Carriage?—Two hundred and forty-seven pounds on the square inch of the boiler, but we have worked it at a greater pressure than that.

To what pressure do you usually weight your safety valve?—Two hundred and forty-seven pounds.

Then you travel always on the lift?—Yes; we are always glad to see our steam blowing off, and when our fire is even moderately good it is always blowing off, even up the steepest hills, proving an excess of power.

Does that create any annoyance to passengers along the road?—None whatever; the waste steam is carried round a double casing of the fire-place, then brought over the surface of the fire where some portion is consumed, and the rest passes off through a very small chimney in an aeriform state.

Do you use coal or coke?—Soft and good coke which easily ignites and burns rapidly.

You have not any annoyance then to passengers from smoke from your Carriages?—None whatever; there is no appearance of smoke except on lighting the fire with wood, which is necessary to ignite the coke.

That takes place before you start?—Yes; but even that will not be necessary when every thing is arranged.