The 19th century ushered in a new form of transportrailways.
Journeys that previously took weeks were now completed in days.
It was the locomotive that made railways a grand commercial success.
Illustration of Dalkey Atmospheric Railway - Arriving at Kingstown.
It was a fallacious reasoning but not without merit.
Locomotives are incredibly heavy, heavier than the wagons they are pulling.
Much of the energy generated by the locomotive is utilized to pull itself.
Another limitation with locomotives was the poor coefficient of friction of metal wheels on metal tracks.
This limited the amount of incline a train could climb which constrained the building of railroads in hilly terrain.
Lastly, steam locomotives produced an awful amount of smoke.
It was like a travelling coal furnace billowing smoke all over the countryside.
People hated it and it gave the general impression that trains were dirty.
This was before the first steam locomotive was even built.
Medhurst proposed two methods by which this could be achieved.
Although Vallance’s system worked, it was not adopted commercially.
Schematic diagrams from Samuda and Cleggs patent of atmospheric railway.
The success of the Dalkey Atmospheric Railway attracted the attention of many eminent engineers of the day.
Brunel’s Atmospheric Railway remains at Didcot Railway Centre.
There were frequent mechanical breakdowns and delays and the public began to lose faith in the new system.
The leather valve system gave particular trouble.
Then came the winter, which made the leather flap stiff and snow got into the tube.
The following winter, the atmospheric system was abandoned.
The line had remained operational for less than 18 months.
A 20-km section of the line between Exeter and Newton Abbot used atmospheric propagation instead of locomotives.
Pumping stations were installed every 3 miles, and they worked in relays.
Any delays therefore meant that a station began pumping too soon wasting coal in the process.
The line was replaced by regular steam locomotives.
The Aeromovel shuttle at Salgado Filho International Airport.
Photo credit:Trensurb/Flickr
Atmospheric railway saw a revival in late twentieth century.
This allows the vacuum tube to be closed, thus preventing leakagean issue that bedeviled earlier systems.
It appears the future of rail travel is by air.
