1859.

No. 22.

[ No. 22. ]

PETITION of Henry Smith, of Watertown, for an appropriation of one thousand dollars to aid in developing his plan for an elevated Pacific Railway.

NEW YORK, Jan. 15th, 1855. To the Honorable the Legislature of the State of Michigan, at Lansing convened:

HON. GENTLEMEN:-The undersigned petitioner would respectfully represent that he is a citizen of the State of Michigan, and that, during the last few years, he has been giving his attention to a new kind of railway, herein described, of which he is the originator or inventor; and that he verily believes that if it is adopted from New York to San Francisco, all advantages will result from it herein elaimed.

It will enable travelers to pass from New York to San Francisco in the brief period of thirty-five hours.

It will develop the mineral resources of the West, and in respect to the production of iron, will place us beyond successful foreign competition.

It will make this nation the commercial arbiter of the

world, as we can then erect toll-gates upon the highway of Western Europe and East Indian commerce.

It will bind the Pacific States to the "Old Thirteen" with an iron chain as lasting in its nature as the influence of the iron-willed heroes of the revolution.

That your honorable body may understand that the above belief is based upon reason and science, which are the pioneers of all human progress, the plan is given in detail, showing its manifold advantages.

The structure should be entirely of iron, the pillars upon which the track rests to be graduated to various lengths, to meet the inequalities of the earth's surface, and thus prevent the necessity of grading. A double track is contemplated, each with gauge of six and a half feet, and as the pillars stand bracing outwards, the structure has a lateral base of twenty feet on the ordinary grade where the track is elevated about thirteen feet above the ground. The sections of pillars are twenty feet distant from each other, and are connected with broad-flanged trusses, upon which the track is secured. The pillars have a broad flange on the outside to give them stiffness, and are otherwise firmly braced to prevent lateral swaying and spreading of the track.

The cars are suspended from the tracks instead of resting on them, and of necessity reach within about six and a half feet from the ground, except where the pillars are made of greater than ordinary length, to avoid the neces sity of embankment.

By attaching small cogged drive wheels to the main one of the engine, adapted to a corrugated track, raised above the ordinary one for the purpose, very heavy ascents can be climbed, as one engine can thus be made as effective as two or three now are. These small wheels need only be attached to the drivers, as the carriages can follow up on the ordinary rail. The great facilities afforded for gearing the engine would prevent the necessity for ex

treme rapidity of the strokes of the piston, and thus the power of the steam may be economized, and the destruction of the machinery greatly impeded. It is a well known. fact that a solid track impedes the motion of a car, and the concussion of the wheels is much more violent than when it is slightly elastic; therefore the bearing of the truss against the pillar should be lined with gutta percha.

The wheels of the cars being above instead of beneath, can be made as large as is required, and thus very great speed can be attained; as there will be no upsetting or other danger attending their use; and their great circumference decreases the number of revolutions to make time, so that no difficulty will be experienced in getting bearings to stand a speed of one hundred miles per hour, or even greater.

The company building the Elevated Pacific Railway should open iron works along the route, especially with a view to its construction, as there is an immense amount of uniform castings; and they could thus produce them much cheaper than they could otherwise be obtained. By a proper adaptation of machinery in the iron works, the castings could be made and fitted ready for putting up at a very trifling expense.

From one thousand to twelve hundred tons of iron per mile will build a double track railroad complete on this plan, and it cannot, if proper works are erected, cost more than thirty dollars per ton, in a finished state, fitted for putting up. This would be thirty-six thousand dollars per mile, to which may be added an expense of five thousand dollars per mile for freighting the iron from the works at the mines and puttting it up; and two thousand dollars for imbedding stones, driving spiles, and making the necessary abutments for the structure to rest on. This in all would amount to but forty-three thousand dollars per mile, a sum much less than some of our New York and New

England railroads have cost, and more than three times less than some of the English railways.

The distance from New York to San Francisco is two thousand eight hundred miles; and the estimated expense of the Elevated Railway would be but one hundred and twenty million four hundred thousand dollars, not one-fifth the sum that has already been expended on railroads in the United States within the last twenty-six years. Our facilities for constructing railways are constantly increasing, and we are now better prepared to build a railway on this plan across the continent in five years, than we were ten years ago to construct the New York & Erie Railroad in that length of time. The country would not feel the pressure of carrying on this work so much as heretofore it has those of lesser magnitude, because the iron, of which it is principally composed, would be manufactured at home, and the money expended on it kept in the country. If the Pacific Railway is built elevated and of iron, it places the car out of the way of snow, and there is no danger of animals getting on the track, or any ordinary impediment obtruding itself to turn them from their guage, and most of the work of building it can be done beneath cover at the mines-while rain, winter or hostilities with the Indians who infest the route, would not affect its progress; and if iron works are constructed with a magnitude commensurate with their importance and requirements, we could get a first class railway to the Pacific at least two years sooner than one can be built on the ground.

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In presenting this improvement in railways to your Honorable body, the inventor would beg of you not to view it as a work of over-heated imagination, or mental hallucination, but to consider it practicable and feasible; and as evidence that it is not other than what he claims because the propositions seem startling, he would cite the fact that a quarter of a century since, railways hardly had a name; and they were then constructed in the most rude