The relative facility with which carriages are propelled on railroads and turnpike roads equally affects any moving power, whether that of horses or steam engines; and whether loads be propelled by the one power or the other, the railroad, as compared with the turnpike road, will always possess the same proportionate advantage; and a given amount of power, whether of the one kind or the other, will always perform a quantity of work less in the same proportion on a turnpike road than on a railroad. But, on the other hand, the expense of original construction, and of maintaining the repairs of a railroad, is to be placed against the certain facility which it offers to draught.
In the attempts which have been made to adapt locomotive engines to turnpike roads, the projectors have aimed at the accomplishment of two objects: first, the construction of lighter and smaller engines; and, secondly, increased power. These ends, it is plain, can only be attained, with our present knowledge, by the production of steam of very high temperature and pressure, so that the smallest volume of steam shall produce the greatest possible mechanical effect. The methods of propelling the carriage have been in general similar to that used in the railroad engines, viz. either by cranks placed on the axles, the wheels being fixed upon the same axles, or by connecting the piston-rods with the spokes of the wheels, as in the engine represented in fig. 55. In some carriages, the boiler and moving power, and the body of the carriage which bears the passengers, are placed on the same wheels. In others, the engine is placed on a separate carriage, and draws after it the carriage which transports the passengers, as is always the case on railways.
The chief difference between the steam engines used on railways, and those adapted to propel carriages on turnpike roads, is in the structure of the boiler. In the latter it is essential that, while the power remains undiminished, the boiler should be lighter and smaller. The accomplishment of this has been attempted by various contrivances for so distributing the water, as to expose a considerable quantity of surface in contact with it to the action of the fire; spreading it in thin layers on flat plates; inserting it between plates of iron placed at a small distance asunder, the fire being admitted between the intermediate plates; dividing it into small tubes, round which the fire has play; introducing it between the surfaces of cylinders placed one within another, the fire being admitted between the alternate cylinders,--have all been resorted to by different projectors.