Steam Wagons and Tractors : Uses and Costs.
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The long-continued controversy between the partisans of the steam and petrol alternatives for the heavier classes of haulage on common roads has, if anything, been waged more furiously than ever during the past 12 months. That this has been so is in principal measure • due to the increased cost of the more volatile of the liquid fuels, and to the admitted absence of anything like a uniformly-satisfactory method for combustion of the heavier grades in internal-combustion eng'haes on self-propelled vehicles.
That the steam wagon or the tpactor can, under favourable circumstances, handle loads of gneater weight-unit'value with marked economy is admitted by most people, but there is the important limitation of .effective area, which is brought about by the need to pick up supplies of coal or coke, and, 11101c. particularly, of water at comparatively-short stages along any given route. This disability shows sigcs of being more effectively tackled as time goes on. We have to record that increased attention is being given to the embodiment of superheater devices in connection with the ordinary boiler equipment of standard steam wagons and tractors. One manufartures has always specialized in respect of such superheated
plant, and at the last show of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, held at Bristol in June, 1913, there was a number of further individual departures in this respect.
That remarkable economies are .effected where it has been made possible by the use of piston valves to the engine and other modifications both to boiler and mechanism, to employ dry steam at very high temperatures, has been proved over and over again. The evolution of the ideal system which will effect the desired result in respect of low water and fuel consumption must, however, be achieved without consequent complication of detail. Of purely superheated systems, the Sheppee is the last remaining example in this country. It is always to be deplored that M. Serpollet, the pioneer and skilled° exponent of this branch of practice, died at a period when this class of steam engineering for use on automobiles had reached such a promising stage.
For the guidance of users of steam commercial motors of the conventional types employed in this country and Overseas, we append our latest table of working costs, .which has been carefully considered in the light of the latest experience.