TRANSPORTABLE ARMY RAILWAYS.

1 Adam Street, ittlelphi' 21st May 1865. SIR—The experience of the difficulty of transport over the few miles from Balaklava to Sebastopol has, I imagine, ended in the conviction that hence- forth a railway must be considered part and parcel of the engineering appli- ance& of an army. The question therefore arises, what is a railway, and what is the best kind of railway for army use ? A railiray may in common acceptation be a compound of iron and wood, not very artistically put together, and laid by men of acquired skill 'and practice, at the rate of a mile a week. Such is the Balaklava experience.

A railway may be a steam locomotive line of way, or a horse way. The Balaklava is the latter.

A railway should be two hard and parallel bands of iron, vertically and laterally stiff and inflexible under the loads rolling over them. The stiff- ness and inflexibility may be attained by a substructure of timber; but that involves multiplicity ofparts, mechanical labour on the field, and pilfering of the timber for firing ; and therefore it is better for army purposes that the way should be wholly of iron, and of as few parts as possible.

It is not difficult to construct such a way, capable of being laid down by the most'ordinary labour of soldiers or others in less days than the Bala- klava line has taken weeks.

And moreover, a way not difficult to take up and remove, to follow the army for future operations, without waste of the materials in the process, as must be the case in removing the Balaklava line: A navvie always moves a wooden sleeper by driving his pick half through it to form a handle.

In short, an army railway should be a practically portable railway, adapt- ed to carry a load of twelve hundredweight on every wheel, perfectly jointed and connected rail to rail, and gauged to width and to varying widths, ac- cording to circumstances, each line of rail-hare being practically continuous and not broken. On such a railway special spring trucks of very simple structure may be made-to run, not damaging the rails like ordinary trucks. And every gun-carriage, tumbril, waggon, or ambulance, may be made to run on the same rails, by the simple process of taking off the "strakes" of tyre at present applied to the. wheels, and replacine' them with similar " strakes, ' but rolled with a hollow to guide the wheels on the rails, which walla no way interfere with the action of the wheels on ordinary roads, or put out of use any existing carriage, or involve any confusion by alteration of system. Such a railway, with spring trucks complete, may be-furnished at a few hundred pounds per mile. A pair of such spring trucks would be competent to the transport of the heaviest breaching-gun in use.

The only preparation for laying down the rails would be such as at present the pioneers are obliged to resort to in their ordinary practice. The rails would lie on brushwood in boggy ground, or upon rough logs, or timber, not structural.

A sample of railway and trucks could be produced in ten days; fifty miles in a month.

Landed at any quay, a few lengths of rails could be connected together, and other rails loaded in the waggons, continually carrying them forwards. If for any purpose heavier rails were required,—as to form platforms for heavy guns,—they could be carried in the waggons. Such rails could be formed in curves to react on the recoil.

No turn-tables or switches, no points or crossings, would be required for such a system. A simple landing, of ordinary paving, or log-floor, would suffice for all turning out upon branches, or to make way for other trains.

Nor would very large quantities of rails be required. It is presumed that the Allied armies do not mean to retreat, and that with all fitting ap- pliances they would maintain their ground in any centre they might choose. They might choose to keep the rail open to their point of lauding ; but it would be perfectly practicable, after advancing, say ten miles, to send their waggons back to pick up the rails in their rear, and carry them forward to their front. Twenty miles of railway might thus suffice to carry an army over the whole of Russia, supposing always the physical force of the Allies to be predominant. Troops might thus be carried by portable rail to the scene of their opera- tions, instead of marching on foot. With rails and springs, supposing a moderately level country, every draught-horse would be probably equal to twenty over a natural surface of ground.

There is no doubt that a trained body of pioneers or sappers and miners could lay such way as this faster than an ordinary army could travel with its baggage over the natural obstacles of a country. And thus the troops would have abundant rest, instead of being harassed with severe marching.

There is no mystery in all this. Our modern railways, with their huge machinery and works of art and construction, and great outlay of capital, have blinded us to the fact of the enormous dead weight that has grown on the use of steam. We forget that a stage-coach weighing eighteen hundred- weight frequently carried a load of three tons ; while a first-class carriage on a railway approaching to five tons, only carries twenty-seven hundred- weioeht of load. We forget the coarser class of mechanism used in railway haulage, and which would be absolutely immoveable on highways ; and when we make a horse railway we are so satisfied with the improved road, that we arc content to use a kind of sledge to run on it. The rail, the wheel, and the spring, are the essential elements ; and when they are made simple and cease to be complex, there will be as little real difficulty in the change to them from the present rude appliances as there has been in the change from Brown Bess to the rifle and Pritchett bullet. There is as much difference between the army transit we now have and the transit we might have, as there is between the blunderbusses that hang over bankers' counters, and what we now designate the " queen of weapons," till the time shall come to set up another queen in her stead.

A few score pounds laid out at Woolwich or Aldersbott would demonstrate in physics this demonstrated theory ; would settle this most vital question, quadrupling the effective force of the army by making it moveable, with- out the expenditure cf vital energy, for distant as well as proximate localities.

It is a thing demonstrable by mechanical logic, that our army horses are ruined by hard work as well as our men ; and that we are employing high- priced labourers to do the work which the soldiers could do for themselves did we employ them as intelligent beings, instead of as creatures of rude force. Steam has played its part well in the navy, but steam in the army is yet an unknown quantity ; yet there are uses for steam, and modes of ap- plying it, quite as practical as in the cooking of Boyer at Scutari. But let us first accomplish the reduction to the minimum of resistance and incon- venience, the transport by horse-power in connexion with the army.

It should be well understood that a tramway, supposed to be adapted to the use of ordinary vehicles, is a costly, troublesome, and inefficient structure. The guide, which is on the tramplate, involves very considerable lodgment for obstacles, friction, and displacement ; but the simple process of making the wheels of ordinary carriages self-guiding by a hollowed groove, at once adapts them for the efficient edge-rail or rail proper, without impairing their utility otherwise. It is the vertically deep-edge rail, and not the shal- low tramplate, that reduces resistance to the minimum. Upon each railways, portable engines, not being locomotives, or of de- structive weights, may be drawn with the same kind of wheels as are used to- gun-carriages. The engines would weigh less than a heavy gun, and being anchored on the summit of any convenient height, could be used as stationary engines to draw trains up inclines. Of the various kinds of use in labour-saving to which such an engine could be applied in a camp, it would be superfluous to speak.

There is nothing general or vague in this matter. It is a speeifio appli- ance, as clear and evident as the steam-boats plying on the river between London and Westminster. The same principle applies to connect villages with main lines of railway, and in short everywhere, as the precursor and adjunct of locomotive lines.