3-028-354 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Thomson's road-steamer and coal-waggons, 1870. 'The great difficulty has been, on the one hand, to prevent the engine being shaken and damaged by the road, with its natural inequalities of surface, its hard stones and its soft mud; on the other hand, to prevent the road being destroyed by the weight of the engine. The invention of Mr. R. W. Thomson, civil engineer...who provides the engine wheels with indiarubber tires of great thickness, protected by flexible shields of open steel bars, is considered likely to get rid of this difficulty. The soft and elastic material of the tires, which have been compared to the feet of an elephant, saves the machinery from concussion...[These engines] are constantly employed between the docks and railways at Leith; and have often run through the streets of Edinburgh, with omnibuses, at a speed of eight miles an hour...The report of Major Skinner, chief commissioner of roads in Ceylon, to the directors of two great coffee-growing companies which have plantations in that island, bears the strongest testimony to the merits of this invention. Similar engines have been ordered, we believe, for Queensland, for the Labuan coalmines, and for other colonial undertakings'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.