A RETROSPECT AT RANDOM.
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By H. A. Starch, A.M.I.Mech.E., A.M.I.A.E. (One-time Member of "The C.M." Editorial Staff.)
MY felicitations, sir, to The Commercial Motor upon attaining its majority. 1905-19281 Twenty-one years of fully accelerated development indeed in mechanical road transport! _TO think that only three decades ago the man with the red flag could be seen ambling along, impeding progress, not forgetting that . "those against" mechanical propulsion on the highway' were very much in evidence,. even in 1505. The pioneers, however, met their trials and tribulations undeterred and "the industry," supercharged in addition, so to speak, by the forceful but dignified representations of the one or two motoring journals then extant, is to-day of such magnitude that it fairly eclipses the less mobile form of transport by rail. I call to mind one outstanding exceptiou to the " anti " lay newspapers; curious as it may sound; The Exchange and Mart freely and generously opened its columns for the exchange of views of str_uggling steam versus I.C.E. enthusiasts. Twenty-one years ago most of the rail and tramway officials laughed at and ridiculed generally their then diminutive and Unacknowledged competitors, but recently some convincing figures were submitted to the Chancellor of the Exchequer by your esteemed predecessor, Mr. E. S. Shrapnell-Smith, C.B.E., chairman of the Standing Joint Committee of Mechanical Road Transport Association, when speaking for a deputation. "In Great Britain," he said, "between five and six million passengers are now carried daily by motors, as against three million transported by rail, and no fewer than three million households are directly served by motor." Verb. sap.
Well, sir, retrospecting on layout and construction, I remember when it was quite in order-to add " M.O.I.V. type" to the nomenclature of drawings, for automatic inlet valves were still dithering about here and there. Adjustable tappetshad not yet appeared nor did specifications, where they existed, specify self-contained clutches, sliding gears, gate change or fully floating differential shafts. He was indeed a brave fellow who put in hand a camshaft without leaving the cams loose to be "pegged on to suit timing." Horizontal engines, in chassis construction-, at any rate, had about petered out at the date of the birth of your journal and I believe the Maudslay.Company were the only people who then standardized overhead valves in their vertical engines, which they have continued to do ever since without a single break.
Design then began to take a somewhat cognate form, but I call to mind, while engaged at the Wolseley Company, one or two outstanding departures from the ordinary trend of design. One was the use of blank Cartridges in starting up a six-cylinder horizontal engine of 9 ins, diameter and 10 ins, stroke; it was for a rail-car and developed 140 b.h.p., about the largest petrol motor in existence at that time and built for the General Electrie Company, Schenectady, U.S.A. To effect a turnover for starting, one referred to a dial to ascertain which cylinder was on the firing stroke, when the cartridge was inserted in a kind of breech temporarily replacing the sparking plug adaptor. Then there came along a 250 h.p. six-cylinder vertical engine for a submarine, with its water-jacketed and expansionjointed exhaust pipes and a plate-glass spy-window in each of its three huge carburetters.
At this juncture there came the opportunity to return to my "old love," steam, as a prime mover for motorcars. Metaphorically speaking, I was brought up on steam and was not the only one by any means who had a sneaking regard for this truly expanding and softly cushioning agent, for there existed at that time such ,steam-driven vehicles as the Darraeq-Serpollet (with its double-acting engine), the White, Turner-l■liesse, Fawcett-Fowler, Clarkson, Stanley and Morris on the lighter side of construction,and the Thornycroft, Stewart, Alley and MacLellan, Lancashire, Londonderry, Leyland, Mann, Sentinel, Foden, CritchleyNorris, St. Pancras, and Straker-Squire, to mention only a few of the "heavies." The opportunity came about in this way :—The late Lord Carnarvon, Mr. E. J. Y. Rutherford and a few other zealots decided to market a vehicle to run on superheated steam, and I joined them at Highelere. The vertical engine had three cylinders of 2-k-in. bore by 31-in. stroke. Speed and reverse were controlled by steam cut-off per sliding camshaft, no gearbox being necessary. Well, after long last we got up steam and the little engine proved so full of life that we all thought we had got the I.C.E. people easily beaten. But, as with many more on similar spadework, we had not reckoned with the bad boy of the hydrocarbon family—paraffin.
It was nothing startling to see the engine steam-pipe in a red glow with the superheat ; indeed, on one occasion the phosphor-bronze tube in the thermostat (about in. thick and 20 ins, long) got partially melted by the dry steam. Notwithstanding 700 to SOO degrees -superheat, however, we experienced no trouble whatever with regard to engine lubrication or clogged condenser tubes which was remarkable in those early' days.
The vehicle received a most hearty welcome at two consecutive Olympia exhibitions, but petrol engines had by then reached such a remarkable stage of development that there was but little hope for the externally heated types, for pleasure cars, at any rate. A change over was, perforce, then necessary, and one's experiences in steam-propelled vehicles became but an interlude.
From 1908 onwards your readers will be au fait with general developments. I now should like to be allowed to record a few impressions and experiences while a member of The Commercial Motor editorial staff in 1913 and 1914. What a crowded period indeed! Firsthand information and close contact with all phases of the great industry. Inspections and trials of petrol, steam and electrically driven business machines, fuelconsumption tests of mechanical six and eight-furrowed ploughs, paraffin vaporizers, nozzle-pressure tests of fire-fighting vehicles, delivering the goods in the "One Day's Work" series, the R.A.S.E. and Olympia Shows, all followed hot-foot in the great cause of road transport. Strenuous and varied indeed were one's labours, and how greedily were miles and miles of paper swallowed up in the huge maws of the rotary printing presses at Rosehery Avenue.
At certain periods quite an epidemic of spring wheels, paraffin vaporizers, life and splash guards used to break out. The inventors of the second-named particularly were in for trouble anyway; the ancient saw, "You can't catch an old bird with chaff," was, I mused, very befitting. Each scheme introduced for trial and inspection was the only perfect one and guaranteed to eliminate previous failures. Concerning spring wheels, I found that the sloping setts and kerbstone of Blackfriars Bridge greatly perturbed over-zealous patentees when asked to "back sideways" thereon during a trial run. The inference, of course, is, that with all due respect to the inventors, one always had to be on the look-out for hidden or possible snags.
Amongst other setbacks, the industry is only just emerging from the slump which followed the dumping of thousands of ex-W.D. British-built vehicles, in addition to the thousands of scarred machines saddled on it by countries much more prosperous than the Old Country. Anyhow, sir, we are making good, as evidenced by the splendid examples of British business types staged at Olympia last November. The great cause of mechanical transport by road of goods and passengers is being well nurtured by the technical Press. May the shadow of The Commercial Motor never grow less.