Transportation Books

I did not come to-day with the idea of bringing you anything new. On the contrary, I have come here to get the inspiration which association with those from the outside gives. There is no hope for this place unless we can keep in contact with the remainder of the United States. In isolation we think in a vacuum, and it is only when we know what you are thinking of on the outside that we get the impulse... more...

LEGEND OF THE SEVERN, WYE, AND RHEIDOL. (See Illustration on the Cover.) The Welsh are justly proud of their hills and their rivers; they frequently personify both, and attribute to them characters corresponding with their peculiar features.  Of the Severn, the Wye, and the Rheidol, they have an apologue, intended to convey an idea of their comparative length, and also of the character of the... more...

PREFACE. If the River Nidd and the brooks adjacent, in the vicinity of Knaresbro’, up the valley to Ramsgill, near Pateley-Bridge, and near the adopted line, had not possessed the many water-falls, and given motion to the sixty-seven mills which they do;—or had the great landed proprietors, on the line now adopted been hostile to this all improving project, of this highly favoured and not less... more...

TUESDAY LECTURE The Compass Everyone is supposed to know what a compass looks like. It is marked in two ways—the old way and the new way. Put in your Note-Book this diagram:   The new way marked on the outside of the diagram, starts at North with 0°, increases toward the right through East at 90°, South at 180°, West at 270° and back to North again at 360° or 0°. The old way, marked on the... more...

PREFACE. Credit for the inspiration of this book belongs to my friend, Mr. W. R. Hall, of Aberystwyth, who, in one of his interesting series of “Reminiscences” of half a century of Welsh journalism, contributed to the “Cambrian News,” recently expressed his surprise that no one had hitherto attempted to write the history of the Cambrian Railways.  With the termination of that Company’s... more...

PART I. THE ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES AIR THEIR GRIEVANCES The Lecture Hall at the Royal Flying Corps School for Officers was deserted. The pupils had dispersed, and the Officer Instructor, more fagged than any pupil, was out on the aerodrome watching the test of a new machine. Deserted, did I say? But not so. The lecture that day had been upon the Elementary Principles of Flight, and they lingered yet.... more...

PREFACE. “It is the duty—the imperative duty—of every individual (however humble) to express conscientiously, but calmly, his public opinions, for by such means truth is elicited.” Hence it may be permitted the writer of the annexed Letter to observe, that a momentous question is now brought to the notice of the people of Great Britain,—that it ought not to be neglected, until perhaps a voice... more...

CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTORY North-West Donegal.  A fine afternoon in September.  The mountain ranges were bathed in sunshine and the scarred and seamy face of stern old Errigal seemed almost to smile.  A gentle breeze stirred the air and the surface of the lakes lay shimmering in the soft autumnal light.  The blue sky, flecked with white cloudlets, the purple of the heather, the dark hues of the bogs,... more...

Screw Propellers from 1858 to 1862. During the maple sugar season of the spring of 1858, a well-to-do farmer, of western New York, whittled out a spiral or augur-like screw-propeller, in miniature, which he thought admirably adapted to the canal. He soon after went to Buffalo, and contracted for a boat to be built, with two of his Archimedean screws for propulsion by steam. Although advised by his... more...

PREFACE. In offering to the Government and the public this little volume on Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post, I am conscious of my inability to present any new views on a subject that has engaged the attention of many of the most gifted statesmen and economists of this country and Europe. There is, however, no work, so far as I am informed, in any country, which treats of Marine Steam... more...