Carriage (vehicle)

“ By this arrangement the body of the carriage could be hung low, supported entirely by the wheels, while the third wheel in front, revolving in a small circle with the shaft, enabled the occupants to make a short and safe turn.” What became of this weird vehicle is not known, but its inventor’s memory was enshrined in a song, one verse of which runs as follows:—
“Where, oh where, is the good old Doctor? ”

“ What effect do you think your Carriage has upon the road, in proportion with a Carriage equally loaded, with four horses?—I think, myself, we should rather improve the roads by the operation of our Engines, because a Steam Coach requires broad wheels, perfectly upright and flat on the outside of the tire. ”

“ As far as you have observed, is the injury done to the roads by the passing of the Carriage, greater or less than that by a Carriage drawn by horses?—I think, taking the horses into the account, the injury must be much less; the tire of the wheels is three and a half inches wide, whereas many of the Stage Coaches are as heavy as the Steam Carriage, and with narrower wheels; and I think it is only fair to take the weight of the horses into the account, which I have found to be from eight to ten hundred weight each horse, consequently, four horses would weigh from a ton and a half to two tons. ”

“ It affords every comfort to its guests, and the railway people have made special provisions for the motor car, among these one of the best-equipped garages that I saw anywhere. The motor is becoming a serious rival to the railway in Britain, the heavy reduction [Pg 363] in first-class passenger travel being attributed to the popularity of the horseless carriage ”

“ I am in the carriage next the engine, and as I lie full length in the darkened empty carriage I look out on snow-patched fields and hills, now partly obscured by wild volumes of vapour, now fierily illumined by the glow of the furnace, the black sky raining showers of red sparks on to the vague night landscape, the engine racing forward past signal-boxes and stations, clattering along the changing points of the rails of junctions, knowing apparently that all signals are for, never anticipating any hindrance, skirling and leaping in the exuberance of accomplishment. ”

“ Were I ordering a new omnibus, I should not do so without at least a twelve-horse engine and seating capacity for ten, with luggage; and for heavy work in hilly country an even higher horse-power would be very desirable. My carriage was converted by an ordinary firm of London carriage-builders, who made no pretence of building lightly, and who were not aware that long journeys at twelve miles an hour will in time cause the windows to shake. ”

“ If the breadth of the tire of the wheels of Steam Carriages could be extended to six inches, might they not in many states of the roads be rather beneficial than injurious?—Where the road is properly made of good materials and well consolidated, the mere pressure of a Carriage would not have any effect. ”

“ Just as the carriage comes to a stop, the engineer or motorman, as we would call him, pulls his lever, thereby fastening the car to the ribbed side of the tube. At once a signal is given and the long, thin but strong rope descends to draw the carriage to the surface. ”

“ The most common carriage is the volante, but there are some carriages in the English style, with servants in livery on the box. I have taken a fancy for the strange-looking two-horse volante. The postilion, the long, dangling traces, the superfluousness of a horse to be ridden by the man that guides the other, and the prodigality of silver, give the whole a look of style that eclipses, the neat appropriate English equipage. The ladies ride in full dress, décolletées, without hats. The servants on the carriages are not all Negroes. Many of the drivers are white. ”

“ I have considered the thing well in every point, and I think it is much better to construct the Carriage both for passengers and machinery on one arrangement, not to have the thing divided: my reason for considering it an improvement is this; for instance, if a new road is made, the object of the proprietors of that road is to get as heavy a roller as they can, even if it requires eight horses to draw the roller; they do that in order to imbed the gravel to make it solid, and the nearer that Steam Coach approaches that roller, the better it is for the propelling wheels. ”

“ Camion, Frachtwagen, Lastwagen, heavy four-wheeled waggon, lorry, truck. Caniveau, Rinne, the gutter formed by a roadway and the adjoining kerb. Caoutchouc, Gummi, indiarubber. Capote, Verdeck, hood. Carne, Kante, edge. Carneaux de chaudière, Feuerzugesse, boiler flues. Carré, Quadrat, square. Carrefour, Kreuzweg, road crossing. Carrossage (d'une roue) , Sturtz, Achsenkelsturtz, dishing of a wheel. Carrosserie, Wagenwerk, carriage work. Carte, Karte, map. Carter, Gehäuse, casing, gear case, base chamber. Cassure, Bruch, fracture. Cendre, Asche, ash. Cendrier, Achsenkasten, ashpit. ”

“ These, however, are the only defects we have discovered in the converted carriage, which has frequently made journeys of a hundred miles a day with passengers and luggage. The form, of course, is not suited for long distances, as sitting sideways all day becomes very fatiguing. ”

“ Springfield Mechanics Devise a New Mode of Travel.
Ingenious Wagon Now Being Made in This City for Which the Makers Claim Great Things.
A new motor carriage, which, if the preliminary tests prove successful as is expected, will revolutionize the mode of travel on highways, and do away with the horse as a means of transportation, is being made in this city. It is quite probable that within a short time one may be able to see an ordinary carriage in almost every respect, running along the streets or climbing country hills without visible means of propulsion. ”

“ Thus the Carriage is preserved from injury, and the materials of the road are not broken: and in surmounting obstacles, instead of the whole Carriage with its load being lifted over, the springs allow the wheels to rise, while the weights suspended upon them are scarcely moved from their horizontal level. ”

“ The pole was small but lapp’d with fine wire; the perch had a plate underneath, two cords went on each side from the back carriage to the fore carriage, fastened to springs: the harness was of thin leather189 covered with silk; the seat, for the man to sit on, was of leather straps and covered with velvet; the axles of the wheel were brass, and had tins of oil to drop slowly for an hour. The breechens for the horses were whale-bone; the bars were small wood, straightened with steel-springs, as were most parts of the carriage, but all so light that a man could carry the whole with the harness. ”

“ Because instead of yielding entirely and freely to the seat of the carriage first, and then to its motion, you try to help the horses, or to hold yourself still while the carriage is moving. A man should become one with a carriage in driving, as much as one with his horse in riding. ”

“ In the next place, and parallel with the motor truck, there will develop the hired or privately owned motor carriage. This, for all except the longest journeys, will add to all the small conveniences of first-class railway travel a fine sense of personal independence. It will be capable of a day's journey of three hundred miles or more, long before the developments to be presently foreshadowed arrive. One will change nothing—unless it is the driver—from stage to stage. ”

“ Would your Carriage displace along the road four horses on each stage?—Two ten-horse Engines would displace the whole number of horses along the stage.
Have you made experiments which enable you to answer these questions?—I was not at all prepared; my principal object bas been to ascertain what power I have to do a certain work; I have paid very little attention to horse power.
Do you think that your Carriage is equivalent to a four-horse Carriage on the road, in the number of persons it would draw?—It is more than equivalent to it, from the circumstance of its being able to do more work. ”

“ Experience alone will decide the point. The only danger, in my mind, that is to be apprehended, is the injury which roads may sustain by the possibility of the wheel which is acted upon by the Engine, turning round without propelling the carriage, in which case the road would suffer considerably; and this would take place, if a train of Carriages were attached to the Engine, the draught of which was more than the friction or gripe of the Engine-wheel on the surface of the road. ”

“ And the vehicular traffic of the street is essentially the high road traffic very roughly adapted to the new needs. The cab is a simple development of the carriage, the omnibus of the coach, and the supplementary traffic of the underground and electric railways is a by no means brilliantly imagined adaptation of the long-route railway. ”

“ The Carriage may be turned in the smallest space that the wheels will permit it to go round.in?—Yes, in a much smaller space than a Carriage with horses can turn, because it is so much shorter in the total length, and the power being completely under control, there is no danger in turning quite short; whereas no prudent driver will turn a four-horse coach round in a road, without the guard getting down and holding the leaders' heads ”

“ On the other hand, all the constructions that have yet been tried with one Carriage, subject the passengers to more or less occasional annoyance from heat and noise, smoke and dust, and there is still an apprehension of danger from the boiler, hence passengers will invariably prefer to go in a separate Carriage to be drawn by the Engine carriage; that mode also offers a facility of changing the engine for another, or for post horses, in case it gets deranged, because the change may be made without unloading, and discomposing the passengers ”

“ Before leaving the subject of railway carriages, I may as well give you a description of the travelling cars in ordinary use.
They are forty-two feet long, nine and a half wide, from six to six and a half feet high, and carry from fifty to sixty passengers. Each seat is three feet four inches long, placed at right angles to the window, and has a reversible back. There is a passage through the centre of the car, between the rows of seats. In winter, a stove is always burning in each carriage ”

“ The quick-travelling Carriages on the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, when drawn by the last improved Engines, are extremely easy in their motion.
Is it your opinion, that a road would suffer less injury, from the fore and hind wheels of a Steam Carriage following each other, in the same tracks on the road, than if they run on different tracks?—That depends upon what kind of action the wheels exert on the road ”

“ Passenger Train Stock.—In the United Kingdom, as in Europe generally, the vehicles used on passenger trains include first class carriages, second-class carriages, third-class carriages, composite carriages containing compartments for two or more classes of passengers, dining or restaurant carriages, sleeping carriages, mail carriages or travelling post offices, luggage brake vans, horse-boxes and carriage-trucks. ”

“ If the Engine, instead of carrying the load draws one or more Carriages after it, the toil should be collected and charged on each Carriage, in a similar manner as it is charged on the Engine, that is in proportion to its wheels. ”

“ The carriages, too, are so constructed, that both the fore and hind wheels may turn freely under them; and each carriage is connected with its neighbor by a kind of hinge, which effectually prevents a separation, while it affords every facility for independent motion. ”

“ His cabriolet was gorgeously painted—a bright red; and wherever we went, City or West End, Paddington or Holloway, North, East, West, or South, there was the red cab, bumping up against the posts at the street corners, and turning in and out, among hackney-coaches, and drays, and carts, and waggons, and omnibuses, and contriving by some strange means or other, to get out of places which no other vehicle but the red cab could ever by any possibility have contrived to get into at all. Our fondness for that red cab was unbounded. ”

“ By that means great weight is saved?—Yes; perhaps one-third is saved in exerting an equal power. In stating my opinion of the probability of a profitable result, after twelve months' trial of three coaches to run regularly two hundred miles every day, with despatches only, I contemplated that the engines and passengers would be ultimately in one Carriage, because that plan has a most decided mechanical advantage in making progress along the road, and also in facility of steerage, and safety in going down hill, and fewer servants are required to manage one Carriage than two. ”

“ The post-carriage, for which ten kopecs a station is paid, is nothing more than a very short wooden open car, with four wheels. Instead of a seat some hay is laid in it, and there is just room enough for a small chest, upon which the driver224 sits. These cars naturally jolt very much. There is nothing to take hold of, and it requires some care to avoid being thrown out. ”

“ I am confident that Carriages to be impelled by Steam machinery turning the wheels cannot be made to answer any good purpose, either for conveyance of travellers or goods, so long as they materially injure the roads, because if the wheels slip materially on the road, or if they cut sensible ruts in the road, they will not advance the Carriage efficiently. ”

“ The carriage is an open car, rather resembling a block of low pews taken from a church, placed on wheels, and surmounted by an awning, with curtains to let down at the sides, as a protection against the weather. The seats, which are nine in number, and accommodate six persons each, all face one way—namely, downhill; and a fixed footstool serves to keep the passengers from sliding off their seats. Contrary to the usual order, the carriage on this line precedes the locomotive in the ascent, and is pushed instead of being pulled up the incline. ”