3-008-877 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Smith's locomotive battery, 1862. 'This is a design for a small one-gun battery intended to travel on common roads. It. is the invention of F. Smith...The battery is proposed to be constructed of iron of sufficient thickness to resist the shot from such artillery as usually accompanies an army "on the march"; its dimensions to be 24ft. in length, 12ft. in height, and 16ft. in width. These proportions, it is thought, will allow of its passing easily along turnpike roads whose minimum width is fixed by law at thirty feet. The battery is intended to be propelled by steam machinery...the inventor has devised a means of preventing accidents and consequent delays caused by the wheels that support the battery breaking through the crust of the road. He proposes to place behind the fore-wheels of the engine a horizontal roller of the entire width of the machine, measuring from outside to outside of the axle-boxes, so that, should the small wheels sink below a fixed limit, the weight of the engine is at once transferred to the larger bearing-surface of the roller...The battery will be armed with one rifled pivot-gun and twelve breech-loading rifles'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.