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1878 Article-Aveling & Porter, Steam Road Roller |
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The Implement & Machinery Review, V4 #43, 01 Nov 1878, pg. 1877 |
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11/14/2014 9:13:58 PM |
We inhabit a district where the steam road roller is as familiar to us almost as the favourite omnibus on the same route; and we can testify to the immense improvement in the state of the roads upon which it has been employed as compared with their condition aforetime. Nor is the benefit of the improvement confined to the man who has to cross it in wet and frosty weather. Riding upon the rolled road is greatly less promotive of discomfort, and it is equally pleasant to the horses. We are, therefore, quite prepared to learn that the same amount of metal placed upon a road with equal traffic will last seven years when steam rolling is adopted, whereas without the use of the steam roller the road will want remaking in five years. Nay, that a better road may be got by the use of the roller with one-third of the materials. With the roller, three inches of metal (say Guernsey) will go as far as nine inches without. The result of actual experience is given when we say that the use of a heavy roller ought to reduce the cost of maintaining country roads from one-third to one-half, and the road should be better.
Why then, it may be reasonably asked, is the old method anywhere adopted? In small country places it is adopted because the rates are insufficient to justify the purchase of a steam roller. As to such districts, however. it has been suggested that neighbouring districts should combine and possess themselves of a steam roller. The suggestion is a good one. Nor need it be raised as an objection that both districts would require the roller at the same time of the year, since as good a road can be made in the summer as in the winter. It is only a question in the summer of a little more water. The combined ownership of a roller by neighbouring local boards we desire to heartily commend. We see no reason why the advantages of first-class steam machinery should be confined to the larger towns. Small proprietors of farms would, without the co-proprietary system, be equally disadvantaged in comparison with farms possessing more capital. These smaller districts are amongst those wherein the benefit of a roller is sadly needed. No one having business in the provinces can but have been almost painfully convinced of this. The old system is likewise still practiced in some boroughs, mainly through the dread that the steam roller would startle the horses. The experience of surveyors does not justify this dread, nor does our own experience justify it. We might argue that the horse that takes offense at a well-managed steam roller is a dangerous possession, and had better be dispensed with. That position, however, we do not want to take up. Our contention is that even horses of this temper need not be taken off the roads if a steam roller is used. We have seen the roller approaching an ugly-tempered brute, which has begun to show off but the instant this ill temper has been manifested the roller has come to a stand still, until the horse has got out of the way. We are unable to trace any valid reason for the continued extravagant expenditure in the making of roads, with only such rolling, at the best, as can be effected with the horse roller. It must not, however, be attempted by the use of the steam roller to increase the size of the metalling which Macadam himself found most economical.
The steam road roller of Messrs. Aveling 61 Porter, with which we are most familiar, is a splendid machine. We know no apparatus more adapted to the work which it is intended to perform. It has solidity and massiveness; it has facility of movement and ease of management which makes it capable of employment in any and every direction, and upon all inclines, since it can move almost as easily up the side of a bill as it can upon a level surface. “No compulsion, only you must,” occurs to us as we have again and again seen this machine crushing the macadam into a concrete mass, and embedding out of the way the sharp angles of the cubes of stone with which the road is mostly made. The illustration of this machine, which we are enabled to furnish, speaks for itself with an eloquence of its own. The engine, it will be noted, is carried upon four rollers of equal width, the two hind ones acting as drivers and the two front as steering rollers. As will be observed, these latter cover the space between the two driving rollers. They are made slightly conical, in order that on the ground line they may run closely together, while leaving room above their axle for the vertical shaft which connects them to the engine, and which serves, at the same time, to support the forward part of the boiler. By the same arrangement play is given to the vertical shafts for the rollers to accommodate themselves to the curved surface of the road. This roller, which can be turned round in little more than its own length, embraces every improvement suggested by the long experience of Messrs. Aveling & Porter, in connection with their ordinary road locomotive, of which this roller is in reality a special adaptation. The roller by suitable shoes can be made to pick up an old road; and it will occur to everyone that the steam power of the locomotive boiler can be made to work a stone-breaker, or any other fixed machinery. Further, suitable wheels can be purchased with whose help the roller can at once he used as a tract on locomotive and otherwise. It has got into use in nearly all the metropolitan and chief cities and towns of the United Kingdom; it has been adopted in fifteen cities of the United States, in eleven upon the Continent of Europe, and it is also in use in India, Canada, South America, Australia and the West Indies. |
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1878 Aveling & Porter, Steam Road Roller
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