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Railways and the Roads : the New Problems.
Page 65
Page 66
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TT is under5tOod that the railway companies' -I-Bills granting them additional powers to operate on the roads as well as upon their reserved tracks must reach the Report stage and pass their third reading by Thursday next, otherwise there is little prospect of the completion of the measures (Luring the present session.
The drafting of the additional protective clauses and securing approval of them without considerable discussion of their terms and intentions will constitute a substantial task in itself, but unless it be undertaken in a thorough manner before the measures leave the House the difficulties that will afterwards arise must be numerous and menacing. Let us take as an example the intention to protect Statutory tramway, trolleybus and bus undertakings of municipal authorities within their own municipal boundaries, and assume that the railway companies establish inter-urban bus services. In order not to compete with the municipal undertakings. the railway buses must make the municipal boundary their terminus, passengers being there transferred to the tramcars or buses operated by the local authority. The objections to this from the point of view of the passenger are many and obvious. The railway buses, In the first place, will not be able to run to the railway station, which, in almost every case, is within the municipal boundary. The necessity for passengers to alight at the boundary, perhaps with parcels and children and often in inclement weather, in order to transfer to another •vehicle, the long waits for connections, occasionally the breakdown of the expected vehicle ; or lack of accommodation, will eventually involve a demand for a through service. This demand will grow more and more insistent as the provision of the extra facilities for travelling inevitably develops the traffic to and from districts beyond the boundary, and because expansion' of the rolling stock, where the municipal undertaking is a tramway will, in the present condition of all tramway undertakings, be impossible. The result must be a further demand from the railways to be allowed, on the ground of public interest, to pass the boundary, and thus the protection now promised to hill') cipal undertakings will cease.
The railway companies are in the market already purchasing motor vehicles—lorries and vans—generally of medium load capacity. If they secure thb powers they need it will be interesting to watch the develofiment of their goods traffic by road. Local collection and delivery will be the first section of their work to undergo •improvement by the displacement of the present horsed transport, and some consignments will be despatched by road where time would be lost or more expense involved by waiting for a railway truck or by transhipment to another depot and from one truck to another in order to complete a truck load for a certain destination. The passing of the present group of Bills will render urgent the need for generallegislation upon the whole question of road traffic.
The Renovation of Worn and Broken Parts : When it is Advisable.
WHEN considering the question of whether to replace or renovate a 'worn or broken part of a 'commercial-vehicle chassis, there are certain points which should be given fu.I consideration. First in the minds of many is that of relative cost, but; in our opinion, this is not nearly so vital as relative safety. Much depends upon the age of the vehicle concerned. If a vehicle has almost reached the span of its useful life, Possibly to the extent of having had its full value written down to practically nothing, then the cost of a new part may well exceed the whole value of the chassis. On the other hand, this is no excuse for botching up a part .just to
keep the vehicle on the road. • As regards wear alone, despite the big mileage.. which will probably have been run by such a vehicle, few parts are likely to be so worn as to constitute in themselves a danger, and normalwear can often be made up by such a process as the deposition of a bard metal such as nickel upon the worn surface. The main danger is that the parts may be suffering from the effects of fatigue. Often this may be Obviated by heat treatment, this applying particularly to • those unsprung parts subjected to road hammer and which are so often of material importance from the point of view of safety both to the vehicle and its occupants or load.. •
Even with new vehicles, however, fractures may easily occur due either to accident or to -flaws in material which have escaped the eagle eyes of the inspectors in the view room ; as such flaws may. . be, and usually are, -confined to one spot, renovation by• expert welding Is often suffi
clent to cut out this weak spot and bring the Part up to what should have been its original strength. This weakness at one spot may, however, also be caused by fatigue, and we have known cases in which hundreds of parts have failed at one particular point, and after the material at this Point has been cut away and high-class welding metal filled in no further trouble has been experienced. Careful welding will often actually strengthen a part which has been broken or cracked, and those who have had much experience with this class of work know just where weaknesses are likely to be found in particular makes of chassis, and when conducting welding repairs such experts may often strengthen up parts at points which their experience tells them are liable to failure, although perhaps not actually showing signs of this at the time when other work is being undertaken. It is amazing to find that the modern welder can produce such excellent work and make use of such good materials, and in the case of, say, a crankshaft, the welded portion, even after machining to its original size, is at least equal in strength to the other equivalent parts of the shaft. This work can be carried out with such accuracy that often the resulting shaft is dead true and does not require machining, whilst in other cases it has merely to be skimmed up in the lathe. Welding can be employed for a surprisingly large number of purposes : worn valve seats can be built up, broken aluminium crankcases made good and cylinders repaired, although to get at the weak points large portions of the waterjackets may have to be cut away. The welding of malleable parts is an art in itself, for this metal requires special treatment, but there are operators who can deal with it this applies also to what are familiarly known as cast-steel wheels. In these there, is often Initial internal tensile stressing of the spokes resulting from the rapid cooling of the thinner parts and the slower cooling of the hub and rim ; consequently, spokes sometimes fracture, the crack in each developing into a distinct space. If such a space be well veed and welded, the spoke becomes as strong as formerly and presents the advantage that the internal stressing has been removed, so that further liability to crack is eliminated.
We could quote numerous• other instances, but think we have said Sufficient to convince operators -of commercial vehicles that welding has now reached such a high state of excellence that it can be, looked upon as being a much more certain factor in 6fficient repair work than was formerly considered to be the case.