Train pipe

“ These ejectors, of which the small one is at work continuously while the large one is only employed when it is necessary to create vacuum quickly, e.g. to take off the brakes after a short stop, produce in the train-pipe a vacuum equal to about 20 in. of mercury, or in other words reduce the pressure within it to about one-third of an atmosphere. The train-pipe extends the whole length of the train and communicates under each vehicle with a cylinder, to the piston of which, by suitable rods and levers, the brake-shoes are connected. ”

“ As soon as the reeking engine-funnel of an up-train is seen darting out of the tunnel at Primrose Hill, one of the Company’s servants stationed there, who deals solely in compressed air—or rather, who has an hydraulic machine for condensing it—allows a portion to rush through an inch iron pipe ”

“ Locomotives.—In arranging a locomotive for burning petroleum, several details are required to be added in order to render the application convenient. In the first place, for getting up steam to begin with, a gas pipe of 1 inch internal diameter is fixed along the outside of the boiler, and at about the middle of its length it is fitted with a three-way cock having a screw nipple and cap. The front end of the longitudinal pipe is connected to the blower in the chimney, and the back end is attached to the spray injector. ”

“ Ordinarily, you pulled the handle up, but the last time the boiler was washed out they had turned the plug cock half over and the handle stuck up through the deck among the oil cans ahead of the reverse lever, and opened by pushing it down. I remember thinking it was dangerous, as a man might accidentally open it. On the cock was a piece of pipe to carry the hot water away from the paint work, and this stuck straight out under the footboard, the cock leaked a little and the end of the pipe dripped hot water and steam. ”

“ We find it necessary at once to stoop, and we tramp forward through the dirtiest of all Petticoat-lanes—a thick, black mud coming half-way over our insteps, and our candles being now and then reflected in a running gutter that might be thought to discharge itself from a waste pipe from Day and Martin's. There is an incessant rumbling over our heads, as though a procession of railway trains were out for the day. Large lumps of coal, dropped from the wagons, and cross-beams connecting the tram-rails, render the footing very precarious, and produce a very oscillating wave-like line of march. ”

“ That form has descended to all modern piping for water, steam, and gas, because the best that a pipe can take. No other shape has, proportionately to capacity, so little surface for friction inside or rust outside. A locking-bar water pipe, devised by Mephan Ferguson, of Perth, Australia, is made of two plates of equal width, curved into semi-circles which are pressed at their ends into channel bars of [46] soft steel. As the locking-bars and joints are opposite each other, their joints can be tightly closed by a simple machine which exerts pressure in a straight line. ”

“ Rapid Transit Company, of which 18 columns, or a length of about 340 ft., were affected, the two-track surface railway structure of the New York City Railway Company, and various pipes, sewers, and conduits, and to maintain all surface vehicular and pedestrian traffic. All structures were left in place with the exception of the pipes, most of which were temporarily cut out. The 48-in. brick sewer in the center of Ninth Avenue was broken, and the sewage was pumped across the excavation through a smaller pipe. ”

“ A.--Most of the pipes of marine engines should be made of copper. The steam pipes may be of cast iron, if made very strong, but the waste water pipes should be of copper. Cast iron blow-off pipes have in some cases been employed, but they are liable to fracture, and are dangerous. The blow-off and feed pipes should be of copper, but the waste steam pipe may be of galvanized iron. Every pipe passing through the ship's side, and every pipe fixed at both ends, and liable to be heated and cooled, should be furnished with a faucet or expansive joint ”

“ In the great gloomy shed wafts and twists of thick steam are jetting upward, heavily coiled in the cold air. In the train you smoke two pipes and read the morning paper. Then you are set down at Haverford. It is like a fairyland of unbelief. ”

“ The forced draught in a locomotive boiler is obtained by causing the steam from the cylinders, after it has done its work, to be discharged into the chimney by means of a pipe called the blast pipe; the lower portion of this consists of two branches, one in communication with the exhaust port of each cylinder. As each puff of steam from the blast pipe escapes up the chimney it forces the air out in front of it, causing a partial vacuum, which can only be supplied by the air rushing through the furnace and tubes. ”

“ The locomotives, which burned pitch pine, emitted clouds of acrid smoke that, mingled with dust arising from the roadbed, enveloped the train in a gloomy, suffocating pall. Mile after mile the worn, rattling freight cars and wheezing engine crept along the right-of-way, which, as a narrow lane, threaded the interminable pitch-pine forests that admitted no stirring breeze. ”

“ There is no advantage in coating the surface of the pipe. To prevent decay, such pipe should carry water under pressure or be laid in a saturated soil, so that the wood of which it is made will always be saturated, and coating the wood may interfere with this. Under these conditions the life of such pipe is not known, but it is evidently very great. Large quantities of wood pipe have been removed from trenches in Boston, New York City. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and elsewhere, usually in perfectly sound condition. It was commonly made of logs of spruce, yellow pine, or oak, from 12 to 18 ft. ”

“ Sometimes the spikes fastening the iron strips to the tops of the wooden rails worked loose, and these strips curled up and penetrated the bottoms of the cars, greatly to the annoyance and fright of the traveler. The bridges in those days were roofed. The smokestack of the locomotive, being too tall to pass under the roof, was made in two joints or sections fastened together with hinges. When the train approached a bridge, the top section of the stack was lowered. As wood only was used for fuel, the stack emitted a shower of sparks, smoke, and hot cinders. ”

“ Samples taken from pipes in use from three to nine years are quite sound, and it is concluded that the wood will last as long as cast-iron if the pipe is kept constantly charged. The bands are the only perishable portion, and their life is taken at from fifteen to twenty years. Other portions of the second conduit for a length of nearly 3 m. were formed of concrete piping, 38 in. diameter, formed on a mould in the trench, the thickness being 21/2 to 3 in. ”

“ Water-pipes are made by lead being cast in moulds with a steel rod passing through their middles, according to the size required. The lead is poured into the space between the rod and the mould. After it is cool the rod is drawn out by machinery, and the mould which is made in halves is opened and the pipe taken out. The pipe is then much thicker and shorter than is required for use, but it is afterwards drawn between powerful iron rollers with grooves cut in their surfaces, an iron rod being again placed inside it. ”

“ Investigation justified the assumption that wood pipe under a pressure of 130 lb. would give satisfactory service for 25 years, on which basis it would be less expensive than cast iron, and therefore it was used. Cast iron was considered preferable to steel for pressures not exceeding 310 lb. on account of its greater durability.
Wood Pipe.—Machine-made, spirally-wound, wood-stave pipe, made in sections from 8 to 12 ft. long, with the exterior surface covered with a heavy coat of asphalt, was selected in preference to unprotected, continuous, stave pipe. ”

“ More than forty different kinds of locomotive work for the railroads. Some of them haul freight, and some are passenger train engines. Some are steam locomotives, some are not.
Steam locomotives all need water to make the steam that makes the wheels turn. But they don’t all get it in the same way. One kind never has to stop and wait for its tender to be filled. Instead it has a scoop that dips down as the engine passes over a long track-pan of water set between the rails. With no time lost, the scoop sucks up water into the tank. ”

“ Fast freight cars, and slow ones, too, now have air brakes which are squeezed against the wheels by compressed air. Every car has an air hose that runs underneath it to the brake machinery. The hose from each car can be joined to the hose on the ones behind and in front, and finally to the locomotive’s hose. A pump in the locomotive compresses the air for the whole train. Now if the engineer wants to stop, he just moves a lever. A whoosh of air tightens the brakes on every car. ”

“ When engines with sufficient heating-surface do not steam freely, the trouble nearly always lies in malproportioned or badly set petticoat-pipes. Sometimes a very small change in the position of this pipe will have a wonderful effect upon the steaming qualities of the engine. If the pipe is set too high, most of the draught will pass through the lower flues ”

“ The container is then forced by the pump against an elongated die of the size of the pipe required. A pressure from one to two tons per square inch is exerted, the lead is forced up through the die, and the pipe comes out completed. Wrought iron and cold steel can be forced like wax into different forms, and a rod of steel may be drawn through a die to form a piano wire.
By another modification of the hydraulic press pipes and cables are covered with a coating of lead to prevent deterioration from rust and other causes. ”

“ Iron pipes are either laid in trenches filled in with earth or are laid in cement. Iron pipe will of course rust out in time, and if absolute permanence in construction is desired, should be laid in cement, for after the pipe rusts out, the duct of cement is still left. However, if we are going to the expense of laying in cement, it would be much preferable to use cement lined pipe, which is not only cheaper than iron pipe, but makes the most perfect cable conduit, as it affords a perfectly smooth surface to draw the cable over and give a good duct edge. ”

“ Some expedient of this kind became inevitable, as they had no iron pipes large or strong enough. In modern times a similar device, called the stand-pipe, is occasionally employed to relieve the pumping engines; but such is not necessary along the line of the conduit, because the material of the conduit is made of cast iron of such dimensions that it is strong enough to more than amply resist the pressure of the highest column of water which it may be necessary to employ. ”

“ At the roof the 40-inch riser is run into a 48-inch stand pipe. This is capped with an exhaust head, the top of which is 35 feet above the roof.
All the exhaust piping 30 inches in diameter and over is longitudinally riveted steel with cast-iron flanges riveted on to it. Expansion joints are provided where necessary to relieve the piping from the strains due to expansion and contraction, and where the joints are located near the engine and generator they are of corrugated copper. The expansion joints in the 40-inch risers above the pipe area are ordinarily packed slip joints. ”

“ The bridge over Georgetown Creek, on line of Washington Conduit, is 200 feet span with two cords of iron pipe 4 feet in diameter, 11⁄2 inches thickness, used as water conductors. The pipes were first lined with staves of resinous pine 3 inches thick to prevent freezing, but have been taken out. No allowance is made for expansion or contraction. A similar plan is in use at Philadelphia, over the valley of Wissahikon, consisting of two 20 inch cast-iron flange pipes serving as top members of a series of inverted bow-string trusses. There are four spans, each 169 feet 9 inches. ”

“ There are many makers beyond reproach, and there are scores of pipes showing patent methods of jointing more or less complicated. The majority of the improvements refer to the fast seating of the ends of the pipes in cradles, well covered in cement, and one especially much in use, Stanford’s, provides a ring of material fitting truly upon a ring of similar material in the socket of the pipe, so that when the two ends are put together, with a little grease or resin between them, the pipes fit closely in every direction, and require but little other luting. ”

“ Compartments in the railway coaches are heated with what is called foot-warmers—that is, sometimes the compartment will be provided with this device. The foot-warmer is an iron pipe, two feet long, eight inches wide, three inches thick, and filled with hot water. The foot-warmer is all right when there are but two persons in a compartment, or when two foot-warmers are supplied and four persons occupy a compartment, but when six or eight passengers occupy a compartment—well, 16 passengers' feet cannot get on four feet of piping. ”

“ One seldom hears, in these days, of a broken wheel or axle on a railway coach, yet at the chief stopping places on our railways a man goes round each train as it comes in, tapping the tires with a hammer to detect cracks, feeling the hubs to see if there is any sign of a hot box, and looking into the grease containers to see if there is a proper supply of lubricant. ”

“ In all cases of curves on a line of pipes under internal fluid pressure, there exists a resultant force tending to displace the pipes. When the curve is in a horizontal plane and the pipes are buried in the ground, the side of the pipe trench offers sufficient resistance to this force. Where, however, the pipes are above ground, or when the curve is in a vertical plane, it is necessary to anchor them in position. In the case of the Tansa aqueduct to Bombay, there is a curve of 500 ft. radius near Bassein Creek. ”